shame

1. 1.

   a painful emotion resulting from an awareness of inadequacy or guilt

   Broaderfeeling

   Narrowerconscienceself-disgustembarrassment
2. 2.

   a state of dishonor

   “one mistake brought shame to all his family”

   “suffered the ignominy of being sent to prison”

   Synonymsdisgraceignominy

   Broaderdishonor

   Narrowerhumiliationobloquyodiumreproach
3. 3.

   an unfortunate development

   “it's a pity he couldn't do it”

   Synonymspity

   Broadermisfortune

Other forms of shame

plural

shames·

past tense

shamed·

present participle

shaming·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about shame

What does shame mean?

shame means "bring shame or dishonor upon". That is the primary sense; the word has 7 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in shame?

shame has 1 syllable: shame. In IPA it is /ˈʃeɪm/.

What is another word for shame?

Close synonyms include dishonor, disgrace, dishonour, attaint, disgrace. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is shame a common word?

shame is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.