embarrass

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• transitive verb To cause to feel self-conscious or ill at ease; disconcert.
• transitive verb To hinder with obstacles or difficulties; impede.
• transitive verb Archaic To involve in or hamper with financial difficulties.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To hamper or impede as with entanglements; encumber; render intricate or difficult; beset with difficulties; confuse or perplex, as conflicting circumstances, pecuniary complications, etc.: as, public affairs are embarrassed; want of order tends to embarrass business; the merchant is embarrassed by the unfavorable state of the market, or by his liabilities.
• To perplex mentally; confuse the thoughts or perceptions of; discompose; disconcert; abash: as, an abrupt address may embarrass a young lady.
• Synonyms To hinder, impede, obstruct, harass, distress, clog, hamper.
• Embarrass, Puzzle, Perplex. To embarrass, literally, is to bar one's way, to impede one's progress in a particular direction, to hamper one's actions; hence, to make it difficult for one to know what is best to be done; also, to confuse or disconcert one so that one has not for a time one's usual judgment or presence of mind. To puzzle, literally, is to pose or give a hard question to, to put into a state of uncertainty where decision is difficult or impossible; it applies equally to opinion and to conduct. To perplex, literally, is to inclose, as in the meshes of a net, to entangle one's judgment so that one is at a loss what to think or how to act. Embarrass expresses most of uncomfortable feeling and mental confusion.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To hinder from freedom of thought, speech, or action by something which impedes or confuses mental action; to make (a person) unpleasantly self-conscious; to perplex; to discompose; to disconcert.
• transitive verb To hinder from liberty of movement; to impede; to obstruct
• transitive verb (Com.) To involve in difficulties concerning money matters; to incumber with debt; to beset with urgent claims or demands; -- said of a person or his affairs.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• verb transitive to humiliate; to disrupt somebody's composure or comfort with acting publicly or freely; to disconcert; to abash

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb cause to be embarrassed; cause to feel self-conscious
• verb hinder or prevent the progress or accomplishment of