Usually means: Discomfort from awkward or embarrassing.
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We found 31 dictionaries that define the word cringe:

General (26 matching dictionaries)
  1. cringe: Merriam-Webster
  2. cringe: Oxford Learner's Dictionaries
  3. cringe: American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
  4. cringe: Collins English Dictionary
  5. cringe: Vocabulary.com
  6. Cringe, cringe: Wordnik
  7. cringe: Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
  8. cringe: Wiktionary
  9. cringe: Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th Ed.
  10. cringe: The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus
  11. cringe: Infoplease Dictionary
  12. Cringe, cringe: Dictionary.com
  13. cringe: Online Etymology Dictionary
  14. cringe: Cambridge Essential American English Dictionary
  15. Cringe, The Cringe: Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
  16. Cringe: Online Plain Text English Dictionary
  17. cringe: Webster's Revised Unabridged, 1913 Edition
  18. cringe: Rhymezone
  19. Cringe: AllWords.com Multi-Lingual Dictionary
  20. cringe: Webster's 1828 Dictionary
  21. cringe: FreeDictionary.org
  22. cringe: Mnemonic Dictionary
  23. cringe: TheFreeDictionary.com
  24. cringe: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

Business (1 matching dictionary)
  1. cringe: Legal dictionary

Computing (1 matching dictionary)
  1. cringe: Encyclopedia

Miscellaneous (1 matching dictionary)
  1. cringe: Idioms

Slang (2 matching dictionaries)
  1. cringe, cringe, cringe, cringe: Green’s Dictionary of Slang
  2. CRINGE, cringe: Urban Dictionary

(Note: See cringed as well.)

Definitions from Wiktionary (
)
American English Definition British English Definition
verb:  (intransitive) To cower, flinch, recoil, shrink, or tense, as in disgust, embarrassment, or fear.
verb:  (intransitive, figuratively) To experience an inward feeling of disgust, embarrassment, or fear; (by extension) to feel very embarrassed.
verb:  (intransitive) To bow or crouch in servility.
verb:  (intransitive, figuratively) To act in an obsequious or servile manner.
verb:  (transitive, obsolete) To draw (a body part) close to the body; also, to distort or wrinkle (the face, etc.).
verb:  (transitive, obsolete) To bow or crouch to (someone) in servility; to escort (someone) in a cringing manner.
noun:  (countable) A gesture or posture of cringing (recoiling or shrinking).
noun:  (countable, figuratively) An act or disposition of servile obeisance.
noun:  (countable, British, dialectal) A crick (“painful muscular cramp or spasm of some part of the body”).
noun:  (uncountable, slang, derogatory) Things, particularly online content, which would cause an onlooker to cringe from secondhand embarrassment.
adjective:  (slang, derogatory) Synonym of cringeworthy or uncool, inducing awkwardness or secondhand embarrassment.

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    lime green,     neon pink,     mustard yellow,     chartreuse,     electric blue, more...



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