cringe vs side-eye

cringe

noun
  • Awkwardness or embarrassment which causes an onlooker to cringe; cringeworthiness. 

  • A gesture or posture of cringing (recoiling or shrinking). 

  • An act or disposition of servile obeisance. 

  • A crick (“painful muscular cramp or spasm of some part of the body”). 

verb
  • To experience an inward feeling of disgust, embarrassment, or fear; (by extension) to feel very embarrassed. 

  • To cower, flinch, recoil, shrink, or tense, as in disgust, embarrassment, or fear. 

  • To bow or crouch in servility. 

  • To act in an obsequious or servile manner. 

adj
  • Inducing awkwardness, embarrassment, or secondhand embarrassment; cringemaking, cringeworthy, cringy. 

side-eye

noun
  • A sidelong look, particularly of animosity, judgment, or suspicion. 

verb
  • To look at out of the corner of one's eye, particularly with animosity, or in a judgmental or suspicious manner. 

How often have the words cringe and side-eye occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )