Embarrass or embarass: which is correct?
Standard form: embarrass — Non-standard: embarass / embarras. Embarrass = to cause someone to feel awkward, self-conscious or ashamed.
- Part of speech
- verb
- Source
- Merriam-Webster
Why
Merriam-Webster: embarrass, borrowed from French embarrasser, keeps both of the doubled consonants — two r's and two s's; embarrassed and embarrassment are spelled the same way.
Examples
- I did not mean to embarrass you in front of the team.
- The typo in the headline embarrassed the editor.
Wrong → right
Native spelling engine
- Checked against
- Merriam-Webster / Oxford
- Spelling authority
- Merriam-Webster · Oxford English Dictionary / Oxford spelling · SCOWL
- Commonly confused and non-standard forms
- 64
- Dictionary
- Hunspell en_US / en_GB / en_AU / en_CA · Dictionary license: MIT AND BSD (SCOWL combined licence)
Commonly confused words
Commonly confused words are pairs or groups that sound or look alike but differ in meaning or grammar, such as affect and effect, its and it’s, or principal and principle. Each entry here explains the difference in plain words, shows it in two example sentences and names the convention it follows: Merriam-Webster for American English, Oxford for British English. Spelling variants such as colour and color are marked as correct in their own variety, not as errors.
Related entries
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