Other forms: mortified, mortifying, mortifies
To mortify is to make somebody feel deeply ashamed. It mortified her, mortifying to admit, mortify the family.
The everyday sense is embarrassment at its strongest. The religious sense is quite different: mortifying the flesh means disciplining the body by denial, which the origin explains — the Latin means to cause death, so mortifying is putting something to death. Note mortal and mortuary, from the same root.
1verbmortifyTo make somebody feel deeply ashamed.
“She was mortified when her mum showed her baby photos to her new boyfriend.”
mortify is a shaming.
Latin mortificare is mors, death, plus facere, to make. Mortal, mortuary and murder come from the same death.
Proto-Indo-European
*mer-
Latin
mortificō — cause death
Middle French
mortifier
Anglo-Norman
mortifier
English, today
mortify
Built from
From Anglo-Norman mortifier, Middle French mortifier, from Latin mortificō (“cause death”), from Latin mors (“death”) + -ficō (“-fy”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA