What's the difference between discomfit and embarrass?

Discomfit


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To scatter in fight; to put to rout; to defeat.
  • (v. t.) To break up and frustrate the plans of; to balk/ to throw into perplexity and dejection; to disconcert.
  • (a.) Discomfited; overthrown.
  • (n.) Rout; overthrow; discomfiture.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But the demise of white supremacy does not mean the end of white people, just of their supremacy; given the widespread conflation of the two by discomfited white people, perhaps we do need a month to teach us all the difference.
  • (2) (Of course, she was also perfectly aware of the feminist content, what it said about the disgusted-attracted-contemptuous male gaze, but she preferred the art to ask the questions, discomfit, not preach.)
  • (3) It has been just over two decades since genocide was last perpetrated on European soil, a discomfiting memory that has been largely buried in a continent now intent on stopping the arrival of escapees from more recent mass murder.
  • (4) In that discomfiting political situation, the party’s instinct is to fall back on the NHS.
  • (5) Cameron looked discomfited.” It fell to William Hague to defend the prime minister in the spin room.
  • (6) On 16 March 2012, the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge released two discomfiting documents from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.
  • (7) ISS said it was understandable that Shell investors would feel “discomfited” by the significant volatility in global crude prices but added: “It is worth recognising, however, that the spot price today may be of very little value in assessing the strategic opportunity of a transaction whose benefits will be realised over decades.
  • (8) Its high-profile role fighting Isis in Iraq, Assad’s retention of control in Syria with the help of its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, and the Houthi rebel takeover in Yemen have all been deeply discomfiting for the Saudis.
  • (9) Just as Blatter was crushed by the banner headlines in his native Switzerland when the FBI swooped, so Platini will have been most discomfited by the front pages in a France.
  • (10) It was one of the tricks of Hoffman's elegantly cruel performance that when Freddie met his bloody end, the audience was likely to feel relieved and complicit; he was such a doggedly discomfiting presence, it was clear he could be stilled only by death.
  • (11) Most people would be discomfited to learn how detailed a reconstruction of their lives their mobile phone operator could produce if required – right down to a pretty good guess at when they have been speeding in their cars.
  • (12) For politicians, it can be “too discomfiting” to accept that contemporary culture is a significant contributor to the problem of emerging extremist views.
  • (13) Now that the eruption has taken place, we blunder in with our prescriptions on democracy, only mildly discomfited by the amount of our hardware that has facilitated the long history of oppression.
  • (14) In the UK, we are still slightly discomfited by the idea of baring all in a confessional essay, partly, one presumes, because we are restrained by a sort of cultural prudishness, but also because we do not wish to appear self-indulgent.
  • (15) Later, her memory of it would be a blur that left her with the discomfiting sense that, at least in some people's minds, the medicines were being given "for the greater good", to get the exhausted, frightened staff out more quickly, as there were too many patients who were immobile.
  • (16) His collaborations with Peter Gabriel reflected Gabriel's restless, discomfiting aesthetic just as well as the Floyd designs had chimed with their music: the artwork for his self-titled third solo album (aka Melt), for example, consisted of a single shot of Gabriel's face, apparently melting off his skull , something achieved by the simple expedient of smearing a still-developing Polaroid (a technique later known as Krimsography).
  • (17) There will be laughs, Shanbag emphasises – but Arpana will not shirk the unsettling side of All's Well , one of Shakespeare's most discomfiting plays , the ostensibly comic plot of which (a woman pursues the man she wants so doggedly that she ends up tricking him into bed) is at odds with its riddling, uncertain tone.
  • (18) The people who describe human beings in this way often have scores of pictures, including images obviously taken without consent that discomfited the subject.
  • (19) Those two dissenting members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), Rachel Brand and Elisebeth Collins Cook, both lawyers in the George W Bush administration, did not endorse bulk metadata collection so much as they were discomfited by the scope of their colleagues’ castigation of its legality, propriety and utility.
  • (20) But Arron is probably at his most discomfiting on the gathering darkness of Europe’s economics.

Embarrass


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To hinder from freedom of thought, speech, or action by something which impedes or confuses mental action; to perplex; to discompose; to disconcert; as, laughter may embarrass an orator.
  • (v. t.) To hinder from liberty of movement; to impede; to obstruct; as, business is embarrassed; public affairs are embarrassed.
  • (v. t.) To involve in difficulties concerning money matters; to incumber with debt; to beset with urgent claims or demands; -- said of a person or his affairs; as, a man or his business is embarrassed when he can not meet his pecuniary engagements.
  • (v. t.) Embarrassment.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) If Lagarde had been placed under formal investigation in the Tapie case, it would have risked weakening her position and further embarrassing both the IMF and France by heaping more judicial worries on a key figure on the international stage.
  • (2) This has been infrequently reported to occur during general anesthesia and to cause respiratory embarrassment, representing a significant hazard.
  • (3) Already the demand for such a liturgy is growing among clergy, who are embarrassed by having to withhold the church's official support from so many of their own flock who are in civil partnerships.
  • (4) Updated at 1.57am GMT 1.55am GMT Andrew Quinn (@AndrewEQuinn) @ busfield @ lengeldavid @ gdnussports Why's it embarrassing?
  • (5) In the wake of the horrors of the second world war it was the proudest gift to a land fit for heroes, delivered at a time when the national debt made our current crisis look like an embarrassing bar tab.
  • (6) MPs have voted to abandon the controversial badger cull in England entirely, inflicting an embarrassing defeat on ministers who had already been forced to postpone the start of the killing until next summer.
  • (7) "I'm not at all embarrassed about being gay, it's just that I don't particularly want the first or only thing that people associate me with to be that I'm gay."
  • (8) Many have degrees or work in professional fields, and feel embarrassed by the fact they have become a victim of fraud.
  • (9) Earlier this fall the skier Bode Miller was one of the few American athletes to speak out against the Russian law, calling it "absolutely embarrassing".
  • (10) Plenty of people felt embarrassed, upset, outraged or betrayed by the Goncourts' record of things they had said or had said about them.
  • (11) He will insist "government should stop feeling embarrassed about the need for more patriotism in our economic policy.
  • (12) Asked whether the loss of control of the streets was embarrassing, Sir Paul replied: "Well the one thing I would say is that it must have been an awful time for the people trying to go about their daily business in those buildings.
  • (13) During interviews, married couples experiencing infertility reported emotional reactions such as sadness, depression, anger, confusion, desperation, hurt, embarrassment, and humiliation.
  • (14) Satisfaction with agency performance remained at a high level and feelings of embarrassment generally declined.
  • (15) Fail, and the nation’s rulers face embarrassment in front of a television audience of more than a billion.
  • (16) Plibersek’s spokesman said on Friday: “Who is Mr Brandis to dictate the language on the Middle East peace negotiations?” The spokesman said the intervention this week amounted to “another foreign policy embarrassment for the Abbott government, which is why [Brandis] was forced by the foreign minister and the Foreign Affairs Department to rush out a statement about his inept pronouncements.” Labor ran into its own controversy earlier this year when Bill Shorten appeared to telegraph a shift in policy around the description of settlements in a major speech to the Zionist Federation of Australia.
  • (17) He looks embarrassed – whether it's at the albums themselves or his intolerance of them, I'm not sure.
  • (18) Perhaps Silver and company would have been a bit more methodical if this embarrassing story had sprung up during the offseason or in early fall, when casual fans are wrapped up in football.
  • (19) Britain's most senior police officer was tonight forced to admit he was "embarrassed" that his officers had lost control of the capital's streets in scenes reminiscent of last year's G20 demonstration.
  • (20) Thomas Mazetti and Hannah Frey, the two Swedes behind the stunt, said they wanted to show support for Belarussian human rights activists and to embarrass the country's military, a pillar of Lukashenko's power.