Embarrassment on behalf of others, and what it's called

[jedusor]

In 2003, the word "igry" was coined to describe the sensation of being embarrassed for someone else. The example given there is sitting at a table in a restaurant with someone who tries to get the waiter's attention by snapping their fingers. It's a useful word, although as has been pointed out by others, there's some confusion about the definition. I agree with that post that the word should only be used to describe the sensation, rather than the behavior causing the sensation.

A year ago, when I got into band fanfic, I started encountering the term "the motts." When a band member did something embarrassing in real life, people would say watching it gave them the motts. Further investigation reveals that this term comes from a blog post by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, which attributes the origin of the phrase to Marc Debiak of Eyeball Records (misspelled as Mark in the blog post).

Both "the motts" and "igry" are on Urban Dictionary, although the former appears to be more popular. I like the word "igry" better in theory, but in actual casual speech, it feels a lot more natural to say, "Man, that gave me the motts" than "Man, that made me feel igry."

Comments

[immelmanturn.livejournal.com]

I think I've officially gotten too old for Urban Dictionary. One of their usage examples claims that old episodes of M*A*S*H give you the motts.

[greedy_dancer]

I remember having this conversation with you! We were equally baffled by the other's use of their preferred word *g*

igry

[lara7.livejournal.com]

My guess is that igry was coined to answer that "stumper" trivia question about the other common English word besides angry and hungry that ends in gry with a word that isn't only found in the OED.

http://www.snopes.com/language/puzzlers/gry.asp

Re: igry

[lara7.livejournal.com]

aaaaaand I just now followed the link. I see I am correct.

Re: igry

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Yep. A couple friends of mine were in the group that came up with "igry." They were very annoyed by that fake puzzle, and decided to conquer it once and for all.