cringing
krin jing
- v draw back, as with fear or pain
- v show submission or fear
- s totally submissive
- In the moments before he died, Mohammed told his cringing father, "Don't worry, Daddy, the ambulance will come and rescue us.
- Jarring new examples emerged: the same female soldier, holding a leash wrapped around the neck of a naked prisoner cringing at her feet.
- James Watson remembers cringing when his colleague Francis Crick announced to regulars at the Eagle, a pub in Cambridge, England, that they had discovered "the secret of life.