Meanings
- uncountableThe state or quality of being embarrassing.
[…] and without the least show of embarrassment, or, to be just, of embarrassingness, he advanced to the bedside and held out his hand.
1923, Blackwood's Magazine, volume 2142 more examples
Philosophers use the word quale to describe the "ringyness" of the experience of a bell, the redness of the experience of red, the embarrassingness of an experience of embarrassment, and so forth.
2001, Drew V. McDermott, Mind and Mechanism, page 6Unintellectual he may be, but Gately's reactions to the maudlin embarrassingness and awfulness of AA's precepts sound very much like Wallace's in “An Ex-Resident's Story,” and for this reader they provide the realest and most beautiful and exact account of the author's own experiences.
2014, Robert K. Bolger, Gesturing Toward Reality: David Foster Wallace and Philosophy
Origin
Cite this entry
embarrassingness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/embarrassingness
“embarrassingness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/embarrassingness. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “embarrassingness,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/embarrassingness.
Source: embarrassingness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.