shamefaced
Americanadjective
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modest or bashful.
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showing shame.
shamefaced apologies.
adjective
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bashful or modest
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showing a sense of shame
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of shamefaced
1545–55; alteration of shamefast by folk etymology; see shame, faced
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
There are the shamefaced former members, who confess their gullibility as a kind of penance; there are the cockamamie claims on which the belief system is based.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 28, 2026
We also tend to assume that something is safe if everyone else is doing it, or at least maintain a shamefaced silence about our fears.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 29, 2020
This, surely, is how Joyce, a little shamefaced at the stylistic and, in places, emotional excesses of this great early work, would have wanted to hear it done — spoken, not sung.
From New York Times ● May 14, 2019
I received the same shamefaced response when I called the other two physicians in the Senate—Rand Paul of Kentucky and John Barrasso of Wyoming.
From Slate ● Nov. 29, 2017
Prosper pushed his chair back and looked at him, shamefaced.
From "The Thief Lord" by Cornelia Funke
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
