(v. t.) To draw one's self together as in fear or servility; to bend or crouch with base humility; to wince; hence; to make court in a degrading manner; to fawn.
(v. t.) To contract; to draw together; to cause to shrink or wrinkle; to distort.
(n.) Servile civility; fawning; a shrinking or bowing, as in fear or servility.
Example Sentences:
(1) One test he passed: he could say he loved his country, its values and its spirit without causing a toe-curling cringe.
(2) Inequality, precarity and social division are the causes of our new callousness, helped by the rightwing press, but the real point is that Labour has only two choices in response: either continue to cringe before the prejudices of the public or try to change their minds by arguing for a distinct, simple and compelling alternative.
(3) They cringed even more when I used the word “psychosomatic”.
(4) There’s no doubt there are large swaths within the industry who are committed to overturning this divisive hostility towards women, just as there are men who cringe at the term “brogrammer”.
(5) Second-chance Sunday in Gosford In truth, Justin Pasfield’s calamitous goalkeeping against Newcastle last week was about as cringe-worthy as his new hipster beard-haircut combination.
(6) But there are other dimensions to the Games that should be embraced without cringing.
(7) – rather than on the man’s indecent entitlement, grubbiness and criminality.” 'These women are not statistics' – deaths in Australia in 2015 Read more Surely Lay would cringe, then, at comments made by Victorian homicide squad head, detective inspector Mick Hughes, following the brutal and seemingly random killing of 17-year-old schoolgirl, Masa Vukotic, in broad daylight while she was out walking as part of her usual exercise routine.
(8) It also prompted a collective cringe from many in the Republican political establishment, which is now facing the prospect of losing control of the Senate and even the House because of the drag faced by down-ballot candidates campaigning into the headwinds of their presidential nominee.
(9) As baffling as it may be to those of us whose approach to music festivals is to wear the same clothes for the whole weekend, and to think anyone who bothers brushing their teeth is just trying to be fancy, somehow festivals have become – and I cringe so hard as I write this phrase – "trendsetters".
(10) I cringe when I hear our political leadership deliver yet another speech extolling a commitment to fighting extremism, yet in almost the time it takes to draw their next breath, go on to announce cuts to community services groups, the kind of organisations whose roles are vital in addressing the risk factors that leave one vulnerable to extremism.
(11) … You’re going to get what I think, whether you like it or not, whether it makes you cringe every once in a while or not.” Decrying “bickering leaders in Washington DC”, Christie held out his record as a fiscally conservative governor with a record early in his tenure of bipartisan victories as evidence of change he could bring to the national capital.
(12) The composer Charles Ives, for instance, spent his whole career in a sort of cringe, fearfully anticipating the accusation that to make music was a “sissy” activity.
(13) Sometimes I cringe at the lack of awareness of problems they’re causing other road users.
(14) Electrical stimulation of the superior colliculus in rats elicits not only orienting movements, as it does in other mammals, but also behaviours resembling such natural defensive responses as prolonged freezing, cringing, shying, and fast running and jumping.
(15) Nonetheless, some of Bashir's voters' views must be hard to stomach: informed that one of his voters had just told the Guardian that they were voting for Ukip "because Enoch Powell was right," he failed to suppress a cringe before saying: "The world is full of people of different persuasions.
(16) I cringed when I watched Abedin defend her husband Anthony Weiner in a press conference, as he asked New York City voters to support his campaign for mayor in spite of news reports of another sexting affair.
(17) Surely executives will hesitate to begin each sentence with bizarre jargon or a name-dropped reference to "Tony", now that they've cringed when Simon Harwood, Director of Strategic Governance, does it.
(18) People in my family cringe.” It’s too early to determine what impact Trump’s proposal will have, says Ackles, but he expects to hear more about hedge funds in the coming weeks.
(19) The shadow treasury team's response to Clegg's wealth tax proposal was an infantile ya-boo of the kind that makes voters cringe: "Nick Clegg is once again taking the British people for fools.
(20) I felt the mild elation and giggly cringe of executing a well-designed violent manoeuvre in a video game.
Gesture
Definition:
(n.) Manner of carrying the body; position of the body or limbs; posture.
(n.) A motion of the body or limbs expressive of sentiment or passion; any action or posture intended to express an idea or a passion, or to enforce or emphasize an argument, assertion, or opinion.
(v. t.) To accompany or illustrate with gesture or action; to gesticulate.
(v. i.) To make gestures; to gesticulate.
Example Sentences:
(1) He spoke words of power and depth and passion – and he spoke with a gesture, too.
(2) The present study examines kinematic details of the laryngeal articulatory gesture in 2 deaf speakers and a control subject using transillumination of the larynx.
(3) Therefore this gesture is actually a tribute to the country - they are saying, 'you are rubbish but our rubbish is as good as everyone else's best'.
(4) Finally, it is suggested that the gestural approach clarifies our understanding of phonological development, by positing that prelinguistic units of action are harnessed into (gestural) phonological structures through differentiation and coordination.
(5) The footballer, who plays for club side Gabala and the national team , had waved a Turkish flag during a Europa League match in Cyprus, and appeared to make an obscene gesture at a Greek journalist who asked why he had done so.
(6) Monday's ruling didn't just undercut the mayor's farewell gesture, a capstone in his crusade against unhealthful or just distasteful public behavior, which he was planning to trumpet on Letterman that night.
(7) In a Facebook post , the songwriter and activist claims that Swift has merely chosen sides in the battle between Google and Spotify, saying that the singer was trying to “sell this corporate power play to us as some sort of altruistic gesture in solidarity with struggling music makers”.
(8) Each vocal gesture creates each different vocal style.
(9) "In the same way as the camera tells a different story to reality, it's the same on stage; the gestures that might seem incredibly overblown in the moment are played out differently.
(10) There is no significant support for this unhelpful gesture made by ex-ministers."
(11) President Juan Manuel Santos said he valued the gesture from the Farc, but warned it was not enough.
(12) The study examined 40 adolescent parasuicides' reports of whether they expected to be rescued following parasuicide gestures.
(13) The main effects and interactions of speech and gesture in combination with quantitative models of performance showed the following similarities in information processing between preschoolers and adults: (1) referential evaluation of gestures occurs independently of the evaluation of linguistic reference; (2) speech and gesture are continuous, rather than discrete, sources of information; (3) 5-year-olds and adults combine the two types of information in such a way that the least ambiguous source has the most impact on the judgment.
(14) At the time, he described his scientific quest by gesturing to the ocean: "We're just trying to figure out who fucking lives out there."
(15) Artists round the globe may plead free speech, but to treat the Pussy Riot gesture as a glorious stand for artistic liberty is like praising Johnny Rotten, who did similar things, as the Voltaire of our day.
(16) Significant right-hand asymmetry was found for gestures which depict or represent (motor primary movements,p less than .01) but not for nonrepresentational speech primacy movements.
(17) A worker gestures at one of the entrances of the Lisbon harbour during a strike by Portuguese harbour workers, in Lisbon September 17, 2012.
(18) It’s a present from Putin,” joked another soldier, gesturing in the direction of the shelling.
(19) Mitchell is also pressuring Arab countries for gestures in response to an Israeli settlement freeze such as trade delegations or overflight rights.
(20) This gesture goes some way to acknowledging the hypocrisy of an organisation which has sacked over 21,000 staff, while still attempting to pay bumper bonuses to the bosses.