guilt trip
13
4.9
- noun
- Informal
:
chantaje emocional
- After our argument, he laid a guilt trip on me by reminding me of all the times he helped me.
- lay a guilt trip
- put a guilt trip
- give a guilt trip
Examples
-
I think you give me a guilt trip every time I come here.
-
"I'm not trying to lay a guilt trip on you," she said.
Fiction book (1998) -
However, my guilt trip is a lot less dangerous than yours.
-
That crazy guilt trip thing you did actually worked.
-
Put the guilt trip on them, you know.
Blog text (16) -
Can you hold off on the guilt trips for just a little while, please?
-
Look, you're trying to lay this guilt trip on me again.
-
Well, your guilt trip won't work here.
Blog text (5) -
Which sounds great, but for me, summer vacation is basically a three-month guilt trip.
-
- Don't lay another guilt trip on me, Samantha.
Antonyms
How Guilty
- Formal
19
8.4
156
4.5
375
2.4
- Informal
13
4.9
1
5.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
guilt + trip
The component 'guilt' is transparent and 'trip' can be understood metaphorically as an experience or journey, so a learner who knows both words could infer something like 'an experience of guilt.' However, the idiomatic sense—especially the interpersonal nuance of someone deliberately inducing that feeling to influence behavior—is not fully predictable from the parts and is expressed differently across languages, making it only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Guilt trip may come from the idea of going on a short journey through feeling bad: guilt is that bad feeling and trip is a journey. So, it means 'a feeling of guilt someone gives you to make you change your mind'.