mortify

That it seems a choice at all is what should mortify us.

From Salon ● Feb. 9, 2024

A few years after I sent the quarterback the audio recording, a friend who lived in his dorm told me that he’d played it aloud for his buddies in an effort to mortify me.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 4, 2024

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was mortify.

From New York Times ● Mar. 28, 2023

“Don’t take advantage of your own position and role to mortify the other.”

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 22, 2022

I wonder what he needs to hide, because there is enough here in his living room that should mortify him.

From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Yet even as the siblings lose their sophistication and their self-control to a degree that mortifies their loved ones, Mr. Kolker sees more than tragedy in his subjects’ second selves.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026

“The idea that I’d go out with a recent widower just mortifies me,” Carolyn told THR.

From Salon ● Nov. 29, 2023

It said the spread of English "demeans and mortifies" Italian and proposed that all public and private bodies had to use the language of Dante to promote their goods and services.

From Reuters ● Mar. 31, 2023

Being stalked by an invisible enemy surely mortifies those with an obsessive-compulsive fear of germs, and deepens the distress of many who have experienced waves of uncontrollable anxiety before the epidemic.

From New York Times ● Apr. 23, 2020

I ought to have read more, for I find I don’t know anything, and it mortifies me.

From "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott

With only two minutes for the family to talk, Seyfried suddenly seems mortified to be intruding.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026

In Jablonec, Rangers were unspeakably awful, devoid of any cohesion, desire, threat, their manager reduced to saying how embarrassed and mortified he was multiple times post-match.

From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026

“I’m mortified to say, however, I fell hard for this one.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026

If I was mortified just to breathe, how could I even think about loving another man?

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 17, 2026

She was mortified that the press had made so much of the “mystery-lure of the word code,” added to “a woman’s name.”

From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield

And how mortifying would it be if Mr. Kemp’s guy made the runoff and won?

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 2026

And then enough time passed that it began to feel slightly mortifying to say, “Hi, I realize I should have introduced myself years ago, but here I am!”

From Salon ● Jan. 27, 2026

On this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the DOJ’s rather mortifying confession and its implications for the broader battle over Trump’s federalization of the Guard.

From Slate ● Oct. 31, 2025

Mr Holliday used to really embarrass me because I would play with the boys and girls in school and he would tell all the boys to pass to me, but that was mortifying for me.

From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2025

He went completely under, came up, went under again, and came up flailing and floundering with such wildness that for a few sincerely mortifying moments I thought he was drowning.

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson