Happiness—and we’ll try not to get too philosophical here—is the quality or state of being delighted, pleased, or glad, as over a particular thing: seeing her family reunited brought her great happiness. It often results from the possession or attainment of what one considers good. Bliss is happiness on overdrive. The good feelings implied by the noun bliss surpass those associated with regular, run-of-the-mill contentment. If someone describes an experience as pure bliss, for instance, it means that the experience transported them to a state of complete and utter joy. In some uses, the term has spiritual associations, denoting the joy of heaven or heaven itself: the road to eternal bliss.

To transform something is to change it in form, appearance, or structure (to transform soybeans into oil and meal by pressure). This verb is often used to talk about changes of a less visible nature: technological advancements in the last few decades have transformed society. The synonym metamorphose means the same thing on paper, but it’s far less common and it typically alludes to the biological process of metamorphosis, that is, a profound change in form from one stage to the next in the life history of an organism, as from the caterpillar to the pupa and from the pupa to the adult butterfly. Metamorphose is further distinguished from transform by its association with the supernatural, as in the case of the suspected wood nymphs in Adam Bede (George Eliot, 1859), that metamorphose themselves into a squirrel and scamper away.

To embarrass someone is to make them uncomfortably self-conscious about something. A friend’s bad table manners at a fancy restaurant might embarrass you, for instance. While embarrassment is no picnic, it’s mild compared to the feeling of mortification. To mortify someone is to humiliate or shame someone, as by injury to their pride or self-respect. If you go to a fancy restaurant and this same friend (though we’re second guessing the label) yells about how slow the service is and then upends a table—well, that might mortify you. The sense of embarrassment implied by this verb is so intense, it may make you want to disappear—or worse. You see, mortify comes from the Late Latin verb mortificāre “to put to death,” and early uses of the word in English deal quite literally with matters of life and death.