Meaning & use
Cringed
Last updated
Bent or shrank back in fear, disgust, or embarrassment; reacted with an involuntary feeling of discomfort.
See it in a sentence
He cringed at the sound of nails scraping down the chalkboard.
She cringed reading her old diary entries from high school.
A note on using this word
Increasingly used in informal speech and online as shorthand for secondhand embarrassment, as in 'so cringe.'
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