Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To become red in the face, especially from modesty, embarrassment, or shame; flush.
  • intransitive verb To become red or rosy.
  • intransitive verb To feel embarrassed or ashamed.
  • noun A reddening of the face, especially from modesty, embarrassment, or shame.
  • noun A red or rosy color.
  • noun A glance, look, or view.
  • noun Makeup used on the face and especially on the cheekbones to give a usually rosy tint.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A gleam.
  • noun A glance; glimpse; look; view: obsolete except in the phrase at first blush.
  • noun Look; resemblance: as, she has a blush of her father.
  • noun The suffusion of the cheeks or the face with a red color through confusion, shame, diffidence, or the like.
  • noun A red or reddish color; a rosy tint.
  • To shine, as the sun.
  • To glance; look.
  • To become red in the face; redden all over the face: especially from modesty, embarrassment, confusion, or shame.
  • To appear as if blushing; exhibit a red or roseate hue; bloom freshly or modestly.
  • To be ashamed: with at or for.
  • To make red.
  • To express, show, or make known by blushing, or by a change of color similar to a blush.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To become suffused with red in the cheeks, as from a sense of shame, modesty, or confusion; to become red from such cause, as the cheeks or face.
  • intransitive verb To grow red; to have a red or rosy color.
  • intransitive verb To have a warm and delicate color, as some roses and other flowers.
  • transitive verb obsolete To suffuse with a blush; to redden; to make roseate.
  • transitive verb To express or make known by blushing.
  • noun A suffusion of the cheeks or face with red, as from a sense of shame, confusion, or modesty.
  • noun A red or reddish color; a rosy tint.
  • noun at the first appearance or view.
  • noun to cause to blush with shame; to put to shame.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The collective noun for a group of boys.
  • noun An act of blushing.
  • noun uncountable A sort of makeup, frequently a powder, used to redden the cheeks. Confer rouge.
  • noun A color between pink and cream.
  • verb To redden in the face from shame, excitement or embarrassment.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb become rosy or reddish
  • verb turn red, as if in embarrassment or shame
  • noun a rosy color (especially in the cheeks) taken as a sign of good health
  • noun sudden reddening of the face (as from embarrassment or guilt or shame or modesty)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English blushen, from Old English blyscan; see bhel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

1486 Dame Julia Barnes. The Book of St Albans.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English blyscan. Cognate with Old Norse blys ("torch") and Danish blus ("blaze").

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Examples

  • It's also embarassing and somewhat telling to admit that the only way to get me to blush is to compliment my writing.

    TGIF suricattus 2006

  • A few of the first users have already destroyed the myth and showed off screen shots of the new Administration Panels and talked about the new features, so the blush is off the rose of wordpress. com.

    What to do with your free wordpress.com blog « Lorelle on WordPress 2005

  • They didn't offer me a new Lexus for my troubles, however~although they did email back in blush mode.

    Chili Cookoffs 2003

  • A blush is the foolishest thing that can be, and betrays one more than a red nose does a drunkard; and yet I would not so wholly have lost them as some women that I know has, as much injury as they do me.

    Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple (1652-54) 1888

  • If ARTINFO misses anything, it is because we got stuck in a "blush" - colored bridesmaid's dress and fell over, briefly knocking ourselves out on the edge of the bathtub.

    ARTINFO: "WORK OF ART" RECAP: The Undead Get Dirty 2010

  • If ARTINFO misses anything, it is because we got stuck in a "blush" - colored bridesmaid's dress and fell over, briefly knocking ourselves out on the edge of the bathtub.

    ARTINFO: "WORK OF ART" RECAP: The Undead Get Dirty 2010

  • We'll use "blush" - pronounced 'bloosh' the way Scots would say it.

    Marian's Blog: Marian 2006

  • Pah! the reminiscences of the horrid black-hole of a place in which we soldiers were confined; of the wretched creatures with whom I was now forced to keep company; of the ploughmen, poachers, pickpockets, who had taken refuge from poverty, or the law (as, in truth, I had done myself), is enough to make me ashamed even now, and it calls the blush into my old cheeks to think I was ever forced to keep such company.

    The Memoires of Barry Lyndon 2006

  • Pah! the reminiscences of the horrid black-hole of a place in which we soldiers were confined; of the wretched creatures with whom I was now forced to keep company; of the ploughmen, poachers, pickpockets, who had taken refuge from poverty, or the law (as, in truth, I had done myself), is enough to make me ashamed even now, and it calls the blush into my old cheeks to think I was ever forced to keep such company.

    Barry Lyndon William Makepeace Thackeray 1837

  • Nars Orgasm blush is certainly an atypical name, although I will leave it to the reader to decide whether it falls under ‘’unexpected descriptive’’ or simply ‘’ambiguous.’’

    Balloon Juice » 2005 » July 2005

Comments

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  • Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.

    Mark Twain

    July 19, 2007