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Glite Dictionary
to spare someone's blushes

to spare someone's blushes

8.7
To avoid making someone feel embarrassed
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : evitar la vergüenza de alguien
  • To spare their blushes, we edited out the awkward moment from the video.

Examples

  • Can you spare my blushes in front of the new team?

  • She quickly changed the topic to spare his blushes in front of the group.

  • He tried to spare her blushes by answering the question himself.

  • The teacher spared the student her blushes by not calling on her.

  • To spare her blushes, he changed the subject when their classmates mentioned the embarrassing incident.

  • He wanted to spare his mother's blushes, so he didn't mention her surprise birthday party in front of her.

  • She decided to spare his blushes by complimenting him privately instead of in front of everyone.

Synonyms

to save face
vsto spare someone's blushes
  • Informal
25 5.3

Keep respect in front of others after making a mistake

avoids causing someone immediate embarrassment or awkwardness

Antonyms

to embarrass
642 2.1

Make someone feel awkward or ashamed in front of others

to humiliate
  • Offensive
414 6.1

Make someone feel very ashamed and foolish, often in front of others

How Embarrassed

to humiliate
  • Offensive
414 6.1
to embarrass
642 2.1
to spare someone's blushes
  • Informal
8.7
to keep quiet
90 2.5

Surface Forms

spare someone's blushes infinitive

Morphology

spare + someone's + blush

The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'spare' (to keep someone from an unpleasant thing) with 'someone's blushes' (the act of blushing/embarrassment), so it straightforwardly means to prevent someone from blushing or to avoid causing their embarrassment. This compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows normal English argument structure, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would very likely infer the intended meaning.

Etymology

Spare someone's blushes comes from the simple picture of saving someone from a red face. To spare is to save and blushes are the red face from 'embarrassment', so you do something to stop them feeling awkward.