Etymology

shame

S1H4A1M3E1

Today it means: An uncomfortable or painful feeling due to recognition or consciousness of one's own impropriety or dishonor, or something being exposed that should have been kept private. Full definition →

Middle English schame ← Old English sċamu ← Proto-West Germanic *skamu
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

shame · noun, interjection, adjective1

  1. Proto-Germanic*skamō
  2. Proto-West Germanic*skamu
  3. Old Englishsċamu
  4. Middle Englishschame
  5. English todayshame

From Middle English schame, from Old English sċamu, from Proto-West Germanic *skamu, from Proto-Germanic *skamō. Cognates *German Scham (“shame”) *German Low German Schaam (“shame, shamefacedness”) *Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Swedish skam (“shame”) *Faroese skomm (“shame, dishonour”) *Icelandic skömm (“shame”) *Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌼𐌰 (skama, “shame”).

shame · verb2

  1. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*skamāną
  2. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*skamēn
  3. Old English · inherited fromsċamian
  4. Middle English · inherited fromschamen
  5. English todayshame

From Middle English schamen, from Old English sċamian, from Proto-West Germanic *skamēn, from Proto-Germanic *skamāną. Cognates *Dutch schamen (“to be ashamed”) *German schämen (“to be ashamed or embarrassed, bashful”) *Danish, Norwegian Bokmål skamme (“to be ashamed”) *Icelandic skamma (“to scold”) *Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌼𐌰𐌽 (skaman, “to be ashamed”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.