Cringe

Quick meaning: Cringe is a verb meaning (intransitive) To cower, flinch, recoil, shrink, or tense, as in disgust, embarrassment, or fear.

Meaning

(intransitive) To cower, flinch, recoil, shrink, or tense, as in disgust, embarrassment, or fear.

More Meanings

1. (intransitive, figuratively) To experience an inward feeling of disgust, embarrassment, or fear; (by extension) to feel very embarrassed.
2. (intransitive) To bow or crouch in servility.
3. (intransitive, figuratively) To act in an obsequious or servile manner.
4. (transitive, obsolete) To draw (a body part) close to the body; also, to distort or wrinkle (the face, etc.).
5. (transitive, obsolete) To bow or crouch to (someone) in servility; to escort (someone) in a cringing manner.
6. (countable) A gesture or posture of cringing (recoiling or shrinking).
7. (countable, figuratively) An act or disposition of servile obeisance.

Example Sentences

He cringed as the bird collided with the window.

But he [Jerry, a dog] made no whimper. Nor did he wince or cringe to the blows. He bored straight in, striving, without avoiding a blow, to beat and meet the blow with his teeth.

[W]hen they were come up to the place where the Lions were, the Boys that went before, were glad to cringe behind, for they were afraid of the Lions, ſo they ſtept back and went behind.

And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor.

Word Forms

• cringes
• cringing
• cringed
• cringest
• cringedst
• cringeth
• crinch

Synonyms for cringe

Depending on context, synonyms include recoil, creep, shrink, flinch, quail, squinch.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include cower, flinch, wince, creep, quail, crawl.

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