(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.
Shrink
Definition:
(v. i.) To wrinkle, bend, or curl; to shrivel; hence, to contract into a less extent or compass; to gather together; to become compacted.
(v. i.) To withdraw or retire, as from danger; to decline action from fear; to recoil, as in fear, horror, or distress.
(v. i.) To express fear, horror, or pain by contracting the body, or part of it; to shudder; to quake.
(v. t.) To cause to contract or shrink; as, to shrink finnel by imersing it in boiling water.
(v. t.) To draw back; to withdraw.
(n.) The act shrinking; shrinkage; contraction; also, recoil; withdrawal.
Example Sentences:
(1) A shrinking populace is perhaps a greater challenge than any problems with Russia.
(2) "The results present a remarkably bleak portrait of life in the UK today and the shrinking opportunities faced by the bottom third of UK society," said the head of the project, Professor David Gordon of Bristol University.
(3) The resulting free anterior tarsal surface must be covered by a free graft to prevent tarsal shrinking.
(4) Sales are also shrinking in north America and Europe.
(5) Burst your bubble: five conservative articles to read as protests stymie Trump Read more There’s the shrinking minority of Americans who believe he’s doing a good job.
(6) The media are more pervasive, seeping everywhere into the vacuum left by the shrinking of the old powers.
(7) This increase was due to a larger radiation dose to the anoxic tumor core and to external irradiation shrinking the tumor to within the high-dose range of radium therapy.
(8) To make the equations of physics carry on working, Einstein showed that the length of any moving object must shrink in the direction of its travel.
(9) VS K influx into high K cells was transient, whereas influx into low K cells (prepared with nystatin), which are unable to shrink via K efflux, remained fully activated.
(10) The battle for eastern Aleppo in maps: how rebel territory is shrinking Read more Some have arrived in government-held or Kurdish-controlled territory with overstuffed suitcases and bags of their possessions, but others have come empty-handed, with only the clothes on their backs.
(11) According his hypothesis "the nerves were shrinking because of drying" and the treatment had to be long, prolonged bathing.
(12) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bernie Sanders: I want to see major changes in the Democratic party But Clinton is still a comfortable favourite in polling at the national level and her team argued earlier that day that if she can shrink his lead to single digits in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, she will have blunted the surprise momentum that unnerved supporters when he came within a whisker of beating her in Iowa.
(13) Unemployment in Spain's shrinking economy now exceeds 4 million people, or almost 19% of the population, and has pushed the bank's bad loan ratio in its home market up to 3.4%.
(14) Ranch and management x ranch effects accounted for more of the variation in shrink than PC did.
(15) The Blairite rump wants more austerity and markets in public services, while their champion, Douglas Alexander, wants to "shrink" Labour's offer so the Tories and media have as little as possible to attack.
(16) The reality is they seem to be in denial that the Welsh budget is shrinking yet they seem to be calling for more money to be spent in practically every area.
(17) Should they shrink from it, the Lib Dems will reveal that they are neither liberal nor democratic.
(18) At the same time, the diameter of the hair cell top decreased by shrinking.
(19) Corticosteroid therapy for acute "shrinking lungs syndrome" in active SLE can improve symptoms and pulmonary function.
(20) The report does not discuss the reasons why young black people make up an ever greater proportion of the shrinking youth jail population.