cringing

Cringe is best understood as a cousin of camp, though cringe differs from camp in that camp can still be enjoyable on its own terms.

It's from a combination of excessive cringing and sustained weeping.

The new muskel-Juden replaces the weak, cringing land-less Jew.

But cheering for the message of self-empowerment quickly shifted to cringing.

In memory, he was reviled as a servile race traitor, a cringing sycophant to white wealth and power.

You could almost hear Kagan, Breyer and Ginsburg cringing every time she spoke.

But when he had finished, Sivert Jespersen, with a cringing smile, said: "I think now we had better sing a hymn."

A little cringing shrivelled old man stood up in astonishment.

If the partners despised us for our cringing before them they were right; we were a despicable set.

He stopped and looked back at the people cringing in the doorways.

In those false, fascinating pages he is a consummate scoundrel, "a mere cringing courtier and a pimp."