Embarrassment

Embarrassment or awkwardness is an emotional state that is associated with mild to severe levels of discomfort, and which is usually experienced when someone commits (or thinks of) a socially unacceptable or frowned-upon act that is witnessed by or revealed to others.

Frequently grouped with shame and guilt, embarrassment is considered a "self-conscious emotion", and it can have a profoundly negative impact on a person's thoughts or behavior.

[citation needed] Thus proneness to embarrassment (i.e., a concern for how one is evaluated by others) can act as a brake on behavior that would be dysfunctional for a group or culture.

Embarrassment increases greatly in instances involving official duties or workplace facilities, large amounts of money or materials, or loss of human life.

Even small errors or miscalculations can lead to significantly greater official embarrassment if it is discovered that there was willful disregard for evidence or directives involved (e.g., see Space Shuttle Challenger).

Sometimes the embarrassed entity issues press statements, removes or distances themselves from sub-level employees, attempts to carry on as if nothing happened, suffers income loss, emigrates, or vanishes from public view.

[8] The Spanish word comes from the Portuguese embaraçar, which is a combination of the prefix em- (from Latin im- for "in-") with baraço or baraça, "a noose" or "rope".

(Celtic people actually settled much of Spain and Portugal beginning in the 8th century BC)[10] However, it certainly is not directly derived from it, as the substitution of r for rr in Ibero-Romantic languages was not a known occurrence.

Rabbis quoted in the Babylonian Talmud state that embarrassing another person in public is akin to murder (literally "spilling blood").