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The Difference Between Abashed and Unabashed
To abash someone is to shake up their self-possession, as illustrated by Charlotte Brontë in her 1849 novel Shirley: "He had never blushed in his life; no humiliation could abash him." When you are unabashed you make no apologies for your behavior (nor do you attempt to hide or disguise it), but when you are abashed your confidence has been thrown off and you may feel rather inferior or ashamed of yourself. English speakers have been using abashed to describe feelings of embarrassment since the 14th century, but they have only used unabashed (brazenly or otherwise) since the 15th century (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Examples of unabashed in a Sentence
Caroline Framke, Vulture, 10 Nov. 2025
Her motives apparently range from a desire to save the country to unabashed, petty vindictiveness; the two often overlap.
—Antonia Hitchens, New Yorker, 10 Nov. 2025
Luigi Avantaggiato Wahlberg is an unabashed fan of moths.
—Glenn Zorpette, IEEE Spectrum, 4 Nov. 2025
One of the great pleasures of anime is that its unabashed, rollicky genre pieces are often suffused with grand, but not grandiose, sociopolitical commentary — a heady combination that many similar pictures can’t pull off.
—Declan Gallagher, Entertainment Weekly, 30 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for unabashed
Cite this Entry
“Unabashed.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unabashed. Accessed 15 Nov. 2025.
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