English · Idiom Candidate

spare someone's blushes

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Avoid embarrassing someone

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

tránh làm ai đó xấu hổ

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: save someone's blushes

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

I thought the best thing to do was spare Oliver's blushes, so I murmured something about getting off to work.

Lineker spared their blushes this time, but not even the striker acclaimed by Francis as Europe's best (Gullit may sue) can oblige every week if the requirement is two goals for a draw, three for a win.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “spare someone's blushes” mean?

Avoid embarrassing someone Literally: save someone's blushes

Is “spare someone's blushes” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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