Quick Definition
αἰσχύνη, ης, ἡ n.f. shame
Strong's Definition
from 153; shame or disgrace (abstractly or concretely)
KJV Usage: dishonesty, shame
UBS Dictionary of the Greek New Testament
noun, f. | -ης | αἰσχύνομαι
25.189 · Attitudes and Emotions · Shame, Disgrace, Humiliation
shame, disgrace a painful feeling due to the consciousness of having done or experienced something disgraceful In some languages ‘shame’ may be referred to by a descriptive expression, for example, ‘the feeling of being caught doing something bad’ or ‘the feeling of being seen while sinning.’ In other languages ‘shame’ is expressed idiomatically as ‘to hang the head’ or ‘to turn away the eyes’ or ‘to hide from people’s stares.’
25.191 · Attitudes and Emotions · Shame, Disgrace, Humiliation
that which causes shame that which is or should be the source of shame or disgrace
88.149 · Moral and Ethical Qualities and Related Behavior · Act Shamefully
to act shamefully, indecent behavior, shameful deed to act in defiance of social and moral standards, with resulting disgrace, embarrassment, and shame Behavior involving disgrace, embarrassment, and shame is often expressed in an idiomatic manner, for example, ‘to bury one’s face,’ ‘to hide one’s eyes,’ or ‘to feel stabbed by people’s eyes.’ Since shame is seemingly a universal type of feeling, there is usually no difficulty involved in obtaining a satisfactory equivalent.
UBS Dictionary of the Greek New Testament © United Bible Societies, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Thayer's Greek Lexicon
αἰσχύνη, -ης, 7, (αἶσχος [cf. aicxpds}); 1. subjectively, the confusion of one who is ashamed of anything, sense of shame: er αἰσχύνης suffused with shame, Lk. xiv. 9; τὰ κρυπτὰ τῆς αἰσχύνης those things which shame conceals, opp. to φανέρωσις τῆς ἀληθείας, 2 Co. iv. 2 (evil arts of which one ought tobe ashamed). 2. objectively, ignominy: visited on one by the wicked, Heb. xii. 2; which ought to arise from guilt, Phil. iii. 19 (opp. to δόξα). 3. a thing to be ashamed of: ἡ αἰσχύνη τῆς γυμνότητος (gen. of appos.).nakedness to be ashamed of, Rev. iii. 18, ef. xvi. 15; plur. [ef. W. 176 (166)] ai αἰσχῦναι basenesses, disgraces, shameful deeds, Jude 13. [(Aeschyl., Hdt., al.) Syn. see αἰδώς, fin.]
Mounce Concise Greek Dictionary
αἰσχύνη aischunē 6x
shame, disgrace; cause of shame, dishonorable conduct
Abbott-Smith Greek Lexicon
αἰσχύνη, -ης, ἡ
(< αἶσχος, shame, disgrace), [in LXX chiefly for בּשֶׁת;]
shame (MM, VGT, s.v.): subjectively, Lk 14:19, II Co 4:2; objectively, Phl 3:19, He 12:2; as something to be ashamed of, Re 3:18; pl. (Bl., §32, 6), shameful deeds, Ju 13.†
SYN.: αἰδώς, q.v.
Trench — Synonyms of the New Testament
THERE was a time when αἰδώς occupied that whole domain of meaning afterwards divided between it and αἰσχύνη. It had then the same duplicity of meaning which is latent in the Latin ‘pudor,’ in our own ‘shame;’ and indeed retained a certain duplicity of meaning till the last (Euripides, Hippol. 387-389). Thus Homer, who does not know αἰσχύνη, sometimes, as at Il. v. 787, uses αἰδώς, where αἰσχύνη would, in later Greek, have certainly been employed ; but elsewhere in that sense which, at a later period, it vindicated as exclusively its own (Jl. xiii. 122; ef. Hesiod, Op. 202). And even Thucydides, in a difficult and doubtful passage where both words occur (i. 84), is by many considered to have employed them as equipollent and convertible (Donaldson, Cratylus, 3rd ed. p. 545). So too in a passage of Sophocles, where they occur close together, αἰδώς joined with φόβος, and αἰσχύνη with δέος (Ajax, 1049, 1052), it is very difficult, if not impossible, to δχιχ: SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 67 draw any distinction between them. Generally, however, in the Attic period of the language, they were not accounted synonymous. Ammonius formally distinguishes them in a philological, as the Stoics (see Plutarch, De Vit. Pud. 2) in an ethical, interest; and almost every passage in which either occurs attests the sense of a real difference existing between them. This distinction has not always been seized with a perfect success. Thus it has been sometimes said that αἰδώς is the shame, or sense of honour, which hinders one from doing an unworthy act ; αἰσχύνη is the disgrace, outward or inward, which follows on having done it (Luke xiv. 9). This distinction, while it has its truth, yet is not exhaustive ; and, if we were thereupon to assume that αἰσχύνη was thus only retrospective, the conscious result of things unworthily done, it would be an erroneous one :! seeing that αἰσχύνη continually expresses that feeling which leads to shun what is unworthy out of a prospective anticipation of dishonour. Thus in the Definitions ascribed to Plato (416) it is φόβος ἐπὶ προσδοκίᾳ ἀδοξίας : Aristotle including also the future in his comprehensive definition (Rhet. ii. 6): ἔστω δὴ αἰσχύνη, λύπη τις Kal ταραχὴ περὶ τὰ εἰς ἀδοξίαν φαινόμενα φέρειν τῶν κακῶν, ἢ παρόντων, ἢ γεγονότων, ἢ μελλόντων : cf. Ethic. Nic. ἵν. 9. 1. In this sense, as ‘fuga dedecoris,’ it is used Ecclus. iv. 21; by Plato (Gorg. 492 a); and by Xenophon (Anab. iii. 1. 10) : φοβούμενοι δὲ τὴν ὁδὸν Kal ἄκοντες ὅμως of πολλοὶ Sv aiσχύνην καὶ ἀλλήλων καὶ Κύρου συνηκολούθησαν : Xenophon implying here that while he and others, for more reasons than one, were disinclined to go forward with Cyrus to assail his brother’s throne, they yet were now ashamed to draw back. 1 There is the same onesidedness, though exactly on the other side, in Cicero’s definition of*‘pudor, which he makes merely prospective: ‘Pudor, metus rerum turpium, et ingenua quedam timiditas, dedecus fugiens, laudemque consectans :’ but Ovid writes, ‘Irruit, et nostram vulgat clamore pudorem.’ 3 F2 68 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § xix. This much of truth the distinction drawn above possesses, that αἰδώς (=‘verecundia,’ which is defined by Cicero, Rep. vi. 4: ‘quidam vituperationis non injuste timor ἢ 1) is the nobler word, and implies the nobler motive : in it is involved an innate moral repugnance to the doing of the dishonorable act, which moral repugnance scarcely or not at all exists in the αἰσχύνη. Let the man who is restrained by it alone be insured against the outward disgrace which he fears his act will entail, and he will refrain from it no longer. It is only, as Aristotle teaches, περὶ ἀδοξίας φαντασία (Rhet. ii. 6): or as South, ‘The grief a man conceives from his own imperfections considered with relation to the world taking notice of them; and in one , word may be defined, grief wpon the sense of disesteem : ἢ thus at Jer. ii. 26 we have αἰσχύνη κλέπτου ὅταν ἁλῷ. Neither does the definition of ‘ shame’ which Locke gives (Of Human Understanding, ii. 20) rise higher than this. Its seat, therefore, as Aristotle proceeds to show, is not properly in the moral sense of him that entertains it, in his consciousness of a right which has been, or would be, violated by his act, but only in his apprehension of other persons who are, or who might be, privy to its violation. Let this apprehension be removed, and the αἰσχύνη ceases ; while αἰδώς finds its motive in itself, implies reverence for the good as good (see Aristophanes, Nubes, 994), and not merely as that to which honour and reputation are attached; on which matter see some admirable remarks in Gladstone’s Studies on Homer, vol. ii. p. 4313; and again in his Primer on Homer, p. 112. Thus it is often connected with εὐλάβεια (Heb. xii. 28; if indeed this reading may stand) ; the reverence before God, before his majesty, his holiness, which will induce a carefulness not to offend, the 1 Tn the Latin of the silver age, ‘ verecundia’ had acquired a sense of false shame; thus Quintilian, xii. 5. 2: ‘ Verecundia est timor quidam reducens animum ab eis que facienda sunt.’ It is the δυσωπία, on the mischiefs of which Plutarch has written so graceful an essay. German ‘ Scheu’ (Plutarch, Ces. 14; Prac. Conj. 47 ; Philo, Leg. ad Cai. 44) ; often also with δέος (Plato, Euthyphro, 12 b, 6) ; with εὐκοσμία (Xenophon, Cyrop. viii. 1. 33) ; with εὐταξία and κοσμιότης (Plutarch, Ces. 4); with σεμνότης (Prec. Conj. 26). To sum up all, we may say that αἰδώς would always restrain a good man from an unworthy act, while αἰσχύνη might sometimes restrain a bad one. Ἔντροπή, occurring only twice in the N. T. (1 Cor. vi. 53; xv. 34), is elsewhere found in connexion now with αἰσχύνη, and now with αἰδώς, with the first, Ps. xxxiv. 26, cf. Ps. lxix. 3; Ezek. xxxvi. 32; with the second in Iamblichus (quoted by Rost and Palm). It too must be rendered ‘shame,’ but has something in it which neither αἰδώς nor αἰσχύνη has. Nearly related to ἐντρέπω, évtpéπομαι, it conveys at least a hint of that change of conduct, that return of a man upon himself, which a wholesome shame brings with it in him who is its subject. This speaks out in such phrases as παιδεία ἐντροπῆς (Job xx. 3) ; and assuredly it is only to such shame that St. Paul seeks to bring his Corinthian converts in the two passages referred to already; cf. Tit. ii. 8; and 2 Thess. iii. 14, ἵνα ἐντραπῇ, which Grotius paraphrases rightly, ‘ut pudore tactus ad mentem meliorem redeat.’? Pott (Htym. Forsch. vol. v. p. 138) traces well the successive meanings of the words: ‘ ἐντρέπω, umwenden, umkehren, umdrehen. Uebertr. einen in sich kehren, zu sich bringen, machen, dass er in sich geht .. . ἐντροπή das Umkehren; 2. das in sich Gehn. Beschiimung, Scham, Scheu, Riicksicht, Achtung, wie aides.’
Moulton & Milligan — Vocabulary of the Greek NT
αἰσχύνη. In P Eleph 1° (a marriage contract, B.C. 311-10) (= Sedections, p. 2) provision is made that if the bride κακοτεχνοῦσα ἁλίσκηται ἐπὶ αἰσχύνηι τοῦ ἀνδρός, “shall be detected doing anything wrong to the shame of her husband,” he shall be entitled to take certain steps against her: cf. P Gen 21" (ii/B.c.) (us completed, Avchiv iii. p. 388) μηδ᾽ aifo]xtvev Μενεκράτην ὅσα φέρει ἀνδρὶ aicxivnv—the same formula in P Tebt I. 104° (B.c. 92). So P Par 47% (c. B.C. 153) (= Selections, p. 23) ὑπὸ τῆς αἰσχύνης, ‘for very shame,” P Oxy III. 47178 (ii/A.D.) ἅπαξ yap ἐν ἔθει τῆς οα[ἰσ]χύνης γενόμενον, ‘for when once accustomed to his shame.
Liddell-Scott-Jones — Greek-English Lexicon
αἰσχύνη (aischunē) — shame. αἰσχύν-η [ῡ], ἡ, shame, dishonour, ἐς αἰσχύνην φέρει[Refs 5th c.BC+]; αἰσχύνην φέρει, ἔχει, [Refs 5th c.BC+]; αἰ. περιίσταταί με, συμβαίνει μοι, [Refs 5th c.BC+]
2. αἰ. γυναικῶν dishonouring of women, [Refs 5th c.BC+]; γράφεσθαί τινα γένους αἰσχύνης for dishonour done to his race, [Refs 5th c.BC+]
3. concrete, of a person, αἰ. φίλοις, πάτρᾳ, [Refs 6th c.BC+]; of a decree, [Refs]
II. shame for an ill deed, personified in [Refs 4th c.BC+]
II.2. like{αἰδώς}, sense of shame, honour, πᾶσαν αἰ. ἀφείς[Refs 5th c.BC+]; δι᾽ αἰσχύνης ἔχειν τι to be ashamed of, [Refs]; αἰσχύνην ἔχειν τινός for a thing, [Refs 5th c.BC+]; joined with δέος, [Refs 5th c.BC+]; with ἔλεος and αἰδώς, [Refs 5th c.BC+]; ἐν αἰσχύναις ἔχω I hold it a shameful thing, [Refs 5th c.BC+]
III. later ={αἰδοῖον}, [Refs 5th c.BC+]; compare τὴν τοῦ σώματος αἰ. Alcid.ap [Refs 4th c.BC+]
