(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.
Wince
Definition:
(v. i.) To shrink, as from a blow, or from pain; to flinch; to start back.
(v. i.) To kick or flounce when unsteady, or impatient at a rider; as, a horse winces.
(n.) The act of one who winces.
(n.) A reel used in dyeing, steeping, or washing cloth; a winch. It is placed over the division wall between two wince pits so as to allow the cloth to descend into either compartment. at will.
Example Sentences:
(1) Boris winced; his presence in the house is becoming ever more marginal and Osborne is now the clear favourite to become the next leader of the Tory party.
(2) We might as well put a white cat in his lap.” The photographer asks McCluskey to hold the king up to the camera, and the press officer laughs with a wince.
(3) Even as Germany winced its way through three years of crisis, bailouts and skyrocketing national debt, openly anti-euro sentiments have remained off-limits for all mainstream parties.
(4) Tory grandees visibly winced on television as the scale of the defeat sank in - and Basildon, symbol of their salvation among Essex voters in 1992, went Labour on a 15 per cent swing.
(5) "Any politician that claims to you that they're an ordinary person is not telling you the truth," Miliband mutters, half smiling and wincing.
(6) Candidate of the day Aforementioned Lindsay candidate Fiona Scott, who laughed a little too loudly at her leader’s comment as his daughter Frances, standing right beside her father, visibly winced.
(7) He cradles a black tea, wincing every time crockery crashes in the kitchen of the backstreet London cafe we're seated in.
(8) The pizza flew, the tackles made you wince and there was no love lost between Wenger and Ferguson.
(9) We slightly wince, on behalf of those more tightly bound to laborious necessity, when we read that "to maintain one's self on this earth is not hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely", and that "by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living".
(10) Yet well-meaning westerners – health experts, development workers, sustainability folk and so on – are wont to wince at the sight.
(11) One wince during this procedure could get you shunned from society.
(12) People tend to wince at the cost of having furniture reupholstered, but when you think about how long it should last (a well-upholstered chair should be good for 30 years) there's nothing throwaway about it.
(13) Neid, though, was becoming increasingly vexed by what she clearly perceived as some rough-house tactics from England, including some rather wince-inducing challenges.
(14) The balderdash quotient is high at all party conferences, but at a time like this people will wince more than ever at high-minded phrases from government ministers that disguise a very different reality.
(15) I must remind you of the seriousness of the assault and that you were arrested, not her.” Indeed, this assault was so serious that it left Ruffley’s ex-partner “wincing in obvious pain” when her friend Ward saw her afterwards.
(16) Ward, a friend of Ruffley's former partner, said the woman had "winced in obvious pain" when they hugged in greeting a few days after the incident and told of how frightened she had been of his "rage and violent behaviour".
(17) NEW WONKS Conservative Voice, a joint venture of disaffected Tory big beasts Liam Fox and David Davis, was launched with much fanfare and, no doubt, no small amount of wincing by Cameron last week.
(18) Grainger, courtesy of a hugely emotional win alongside Anna Watkins in the women's double sculls, now has a gold to add to her three previous wince-inducing silvers.
(19) He does it with a budget of £30m a year, but only £12m of that is spent on programming, he says (still enough to make commercial stations wince).
(20) Well” she begins, shifting her position and wincing, “I was playing with my son’s dinosaur, and it’s stuck.” “OK, Mrs T, but why are you in the sexual health clinic today?” I continue, somewhat bemused.