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Fremdscham (German)
Embarrassment felt on behalf of someone else (often someone so ignorant to what they have done that they don’t know that they should be embarrassed for themselves); vicarious embarrassment.
Word donated by Glenn
December 3rd, 2011 at 11:33 am
Nice one! “die Fremdscham” is the noun describing the phenomenon, and “das Fremdschämen” describes the process of being ashamed for sb., and there is also “sich fremdschämen”, a reflexive verb, which perfectly conveys that the shame felt falls back on oneself and is felt for the other person by the guy who is shamed for the other one….
December 5th, 2011 at 5:22 am
Jan-
I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in the reflexive before, although it would have been a more precise phrase to have used in the context I was first exposed to the word. Very interesting!
Do you know if it’s a divisible verb? Not being a native speaker, both “Ich schäme mich fremd” and “Ich fremdschäme mich” sound slightly ridiculous to me
January 19th, 2012 at 12:58 am
In spanish, we say “pena ajena”
January 31st, 2012 at 4:25 pm
In Dutch, we call it ‘plaatsvervangende schaamte’.
February 3rd, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Glenn, it is indeed a divisible verb:
“Ich schäme mich fremd”
But I think at least the verb can be translated in an understandable way – English speakers would certainly understand “I am ashamed for someone else.”
February 28th, 2012 at 5:14 pm
Funny how the best known German untranslatable word (to English) is Schadenfreude, and here we have another actually useful psychology-related untranslatable German word.
There is a Finnish equivalent to this too, by the way, “myötähäpeä”. Seems to be a translation from the German, though, as it’s a compound word that literally means something like “sympathetic shame”.
August 1st, 2012 at 4:33 pm
To cut in there…it actually simply “fremdschämen”, no German would say “Fremdscham” or “Ich schäme mich fremd.” That’s because it’s a fairly new word, coined during one of the seasons of the German version of the Idol Franchise (named “Deutschland sucht den Superstar”), which expressed the feeling of the jury about the performance of some of the people who tried to participate. It actually descripes the feeling someone gets when someone acts so idiotic, that it stops being funny to watch him fail and you instead feel uncomfortable.
Glenn: The most common phrases would be “Da muss man sich ja fremdschämen.” or “Da konnte ich mich nur fremdschämen.”
August 17th, 2012 at 10:55 pm
In Spain “vergüenza ajena”.
November 18th, 2012 at 11:56 am
[...] pillow (normally a pillow Swedes hide their faces behind while watching something that induces Fremdscham, but also handy for when assaulted by too many [...]
February 22nd, 2013 at 6:57 pm
There’s a subset of reddit devoted to this feeling, and they call it “cringe.” Not sure if the majority of English speakers would associate the word with this specific context though.
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