verb

mortify

MOR-tih-fy/ˈmɔːrtɪfaɪ/

To make someone feel deeply embarrassed or humiliated.

The embarrassing childhood portrait mortifies the adult, whose flushed face disappears behind raised hands.

At a small informal gathering, an adult proudly holds up an embarrassing childhood portrait of a second adult, while that second adult flushes, hunches their shoulders and covers their face in intense embarrassment.

Etymology

The literal image is “make dead”: the verb originally meant to kill. Its uses extended to subduing bodily desires through discipline and later to humiliating or deeply embarrassing someone.

In context

Libranima479:16

Don Quixote turned all colours, which, on his sunburnt face, mottled it till it looked like jasper. The duke and duchess suppressed their laughter so as not altogether to mortify Don Quixote

Don Quixote - Cervantes (Illustrated Audiobook) Part 3 of 4

More examples

I was mortified when I realized everyone could hear my conversation.
Forgetting the client's name mortifies him.
She avoids correcting him publicly for fear of mortifying him.

Forms

mortify · mortifies · mortified · mortifying

mortification noun — A feeling of deep embarrassment or humiliation.

Similar words

embarrass: Can describe milder social discomfort, not necessarily deep humiliation.
humiliate: Emphasizes loss of dignity, often through another person's actions.
shame: Often involves guilt or wrongdoing, not just social embarrassment.