To cower, flinch, recoil, shrink, or tense, as in disgust, embarrassment, or fear.
To experience an inward feeling of disgust, embarrassment, or fear; (by extension) to feel very embarrassed.
To bow or crouch in servility.
To act in an obsequious or servile manner.
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”).
Awkwardness or embarrassment which causes an onlooker to cringe; cringeworthiness.
Inducing awkwardness, embarrassment, or secondhand embarrassment; cringemaking, cringeworthy, cringy.
To make someone tense or psyched up. See also adjective wired.
To send a message or monetary funds to another person through a telecommunications system, formerly predominantly by telegraph.
To place (a ball) so that the wire of a wicket prevents a successful shot.
To fasten with wire, especially with reference to wine bottles, corks, or fencing.
To set or predetermine (someone's personality or behaviour, or an organization's culture) in a particular way.
To string on a wire.
To add (something) into a system (especially an electrical system) by means of wiring.
To snare by means of a wire or wires.
To install eavesdropping equipment.
To connect, involve or embed (something) deeply or intimately into (something else, such as an organization or political scene), so that it is plugged in (to that thing) (“keeping up with current information about (the thing)”) or has insinuated itself into (the thing).
To add or connect (something) into a system as if with wires (for example, with nerves).
To equip with wires for use with electricity.
Any of the system of wires used to operate the puppets in a puppet show; hence, the network of hidden influences controlling the action of a person or organization; strings.
A piece of such material; a thread or slender rod of metal, a cable.
A knitting needle.
Metal formed into a thin, even thread, now usually by being drawn through a hole in a steel die.
A telecommunication wire or cable.
An electric telegraph; a telegram.
A hidden listening device on the person of an undercover operative for the purposes of obtaining incriminating spoken evidence.
A fence made of usually barbed wire.
A deadline or critical endpoint.
A metal conductor that carries electricity.
A finish line of a racetrack.
A wire strung with beads and hung horizontally above or near the table which is used to keep score.
The slender shaft of the plumage of certain birds.
A covert signal sent between people cheating in a card game.