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Cringe vs Fringe - What's the difference?

cringe | fringe |

As nouns the difference between cringe and fringe

is that cringe is a posture or gesture of shrinking or recoiling while fringe is a decorative border.

As verbs the difference between cringe and fringe

is that cringe is to bow or crouch in servility while fringe is to decorate with fringe.

As an adjective fringe is

outside the mainstream.

cringe

English

Alternative forms

* (dialectal)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A posture or gesture of shrinking or recoiling.
    • He glanced with a cringe at the mess on his desk.
  • (dialect) A crick.

    • Verb

  • (dated) To bow or crouch in servility.
  • * Milton
    • Sly hypocrite, who more than thou / Once fawned and cringed , and servilely adored / Heaven's awful monarch?
  • * 1903 , ,
    • He heard the hateful clank of their chains; he felt them cringe and grovel, and there rose within him a protest and a prophecy.
  • * 1904 , ,
    • Leclere was bent on the coming of the day when Batard should wilt in spirit and cringe and whimper at his feet.
  • To shrink, tense or recoil, as in fear, disgust or embarrassment.
    • He cringed as the bird collided with the window.
  • * Bunyan
    • When they were come up to the place where the lions were, the boys that went before were glad to cringe behind, for they were afraid of the lions.
  • * 1917 , ,
    • But he made no whimper. Nor did he wince or cringe to the blows. He bored straight in, striving, without avoiding a blow, to beat and meet the blow with his teeth.
  • (obsolete) To contract; to draw together; to cause to shrink or wrinkle; to distort.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Till like a boy you see him cringe his face, / And whine aloud for mercy.

    Derived terms

    * cringeworthy

    See also

    * crouch * wince

    Anagrams

    *

    fringe

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A decorative border.
    • the fringe of a picture
  • A marginal or peripheral part.
  • * (and other bibliographic particulars) (Jeremy Taylor)
    • the confines of grace and the fringes of repentance
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=2011 , date=September 29 , author=Jon Smith , title=Tottenham 3 - 1 Shamrock Rovers , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=Dos Santos, who has often been on the fringes at Spurs since moving from Barcelona, whipped in a fantastic cross that Pavlyuchenko emphatically headed home for his first goal of the season.}}
  • Those members of a political party, or any social group, holding unorthodox views.
  • The periphery of a town or city.
    • He lives in the fringe of London.
  • That part of the hair that hangs down above the eyes; bangs.
    • Her fringe is so long it covers her eyes.
  • * 1915 , ":
    • In a few minutes Mrs. Athelny appeared. She had taken her hair out of the curling pins and now wore an elaborate fringe .
  • * 1981 , , HERmione , page 155,
    • Fayne in the photograph had a fringe , hair frizzed over hidden ears, sleeves over-ornate, the whole thing out of keeping.
  • * 2007 , , Sophie's Dilemma , page 16,
    • Ingeborg knew she wasn?t ready for fringes or short hair like some of the women she?d seen, and she hoped her daughter wasn?t either.
    “No.” Astrid?s tone dismissed Sophie and the fringe as she galloped off to a new topic.
  • * 2009 , Geraldine Biddle-Perry, Sarah Cheang, Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion , page 231,
    • Set against the seductive visual and textual imagery of these soft-focus fantasy worlds, the stock list details offer the reader a very real solution to achieving the look themselves, ‘Hair, including coloured fringes (obtainable from Joseph, £3.50) by Paul Nix’ (Baker 1972a: 68).
  • (label) A light or dark band formed by the diffraction of light.
    • interference fringe
  • Non-mainstream theatre.
    • The Fringe''; ''Edinburgh Fringe'''''; ''Adelaide '''Fringe
  • (label) The peristome or fringe-like appendage of the capsules of most mosses.

    • Synonyms

    * (hair in front) forelock, bangs (US) *

    Derived terms

    * fringe benefit * fringy * lunatic fringe

    Adjective

    (-)
  • Outside the mainstream.

    • Synonyms

    * nonmainstream

    Verb

    (fring)
  • To decorate with fringe.
  • To serve as a fringe.
  • * 1922 , (Virginia Woolf), (w, Jacob's Room) Chapter 2
    • Purple bonnets fringed soft, pink, querulous faces on pillows in bath chairs.

    Anagrams

    *