"guilt-trip" meaning in English

See guilt-trip in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: guilt-trips [present, singular, third-person], guilt-tripping [participle, present], guilt-tripped [participle, past], guilt-tripped [past]
Etymology: Verbal form of guilt trip. First use appears c. 1977 in the defunct periodical Spare Rib. Head templates: {{en-verb|++}} guilt-trip (third-person singular simple present guilt-trips, present participle guilt-tripping, simple past and past participle guilt-tripped)
  1. (informal, transitive) To attempt to induce a guilt trip; to cause another to feel guilt, in order to influence the behavior of that individual. Wikipedia link: Spare Rib Tags: informal, transitive Translations (to cause another to feel guilt): syyllistää (Finnish), hacer sentir culpable (Spanish), hacer sentir mal por (Spanish)

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_text": "Verbal form of guilt trip. First use appears c. 1977 in the defunct periodical Spare Rib.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "guilt-trips",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "guilt-tripping",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "guilt-tripped",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "guilt-tripped",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
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      },
      "expansion": "guilt-trip (third-person singular simple present guilt-trips, present participle guilt-tripping, simple past and past participle guilt-tripped)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Finnish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Spanish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              3,
              13
            ]
          ],
          "text": "to guilt-trip someone into [doing] something",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              41,
              51
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1999, David A. Shapiro, Choosing the Right Thing to Do, page 136:",
          "text": "I have been fully expecting my father to guilt-trip me, to lay it on really thick about what a terrible son I am, to basically, talk down to me like I was some kind of idiot.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              19,
              29
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2007, Ronald Potter-Efron, Rage: A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Explosive Anger, page 106:",
          "text": "First, he tries to guilt-trip her into taking them.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              30,
              40
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2011, Brian Goins, Playing Hurt: A Guy's Strategy for a Winning Marriage, page 18:",
          "text": "In this book, I don't want to guilt-trip you into action.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              150,
              160
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2024 July 20, Maureen Dowd, “Lord Almighty, Joe, Let It Go!”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
          "text": "Given that Biden said it would take the Lord Almighty to make him drop out, I have no doubt that Pelosi has been using their shared Catholic faith to guilt-trip the president into understanding the stakes, and what she thinks the Lord Almighty would want.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              71,
              84
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2025 May 26, Eva Corlett, quoting Shane Jones, “New Zealand will not be ‘guilt-tripped’ over environment, resources minister says”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
          "text": "New Zealand’s minister for resources, Shane Jones, said he will not be guilt-tripped by “apocalyptic images” of mining and its effects on the environment put forward by his critics, as he embarks on a major mining push.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To attempt to induce a guilt trip; to cause another to feel guilt, in order to influence the behavior of that individual."
      ],
      "id": "en-guilt-trip-en-verb-9j3pEvMc",
      "links": [
        [
          "attempt",
          "attempt"
        ],
        [
          "induce",
          "induce"
        ],
        [
          "guilt trip",
          "guilt trip"
        ],
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ],
        [
          "feel",
          "feel"
        ],
        [
          "guilt",
          "guilt"
        ],
        [
          "in order to",
          "in order to"
        ],
        [
          "influence",
          "influence"
        ],
        [
          "behavior",
          "behavior"
        ],
        [
          "individual",
          "individual"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, transitive) To attempt to induce a guilt trip; to cause another to feel guilt, in order to influence the behavior of that individual."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal",
        "transitive"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to cause another to feel guilt",
          "word": "syyllistää"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "to cause another to feel guilt",
          "word": "hacer sentir culpable"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "to cause another to feel guilt",
          "word": "hacer sentir mal por"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Spare Rib"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "guilt-trip"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Verbal form of guilt trip. First use appears c. 1977 in the defunct periodical Spare Rib.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "guilt-trips",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "guilt-tripping",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "guilt-tripped",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "guilt-tripped",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "++"
      },
      "expansion": "guilt-trip (third-person singular simple present guilt-trips, present participle guilt-tripping, simple past and past participle guilt-tripped)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with collocations",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English transitive verbs",
        "English verbs",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Terms with Finnish translations",
        "Terms with Spanish translations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              3,
              13
            ]
          ],
          "text": "to guilt-trip someone into [doing] something",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              41,
              51
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1999, David A. Shapiro, Choosing the Right Thing to Do, page 136:",
          "text": "I have been fully expecting my father to guilt-trip me, to lay it on really thick about what a terrible son I am, to basically, talk down to me like I was some kind of idiot.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              19,
              29
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2007, Ronald Potter-Efron, Rage: A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Explosive Anger, page 106:",
          "text": "First, he tries to guilt-trip her into taking them.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              30,
              40
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2011, Brian Goins, Playing Hurt: A Guy's Strategy for a Winning Marriage, page 18:",
          "text": "In this book, I don't want to guilt-trip you into action.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              150,
              160
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2024 July 20, Maureen Dowd, “Lord Almighty, Joe, Let It Go!”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
          "text": "Given that Biden said it would take the Lord Almighty to make him drop out, I have no doubt that Pelosi has been using their shared Catholic faith to guilt-trip the president into understanding the stakes, and what she thinks the Lord Almighty would want.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              71,
              84
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2025 May 26, Eva Corlett, quoting Shane Jones, “New Zealand will not be ‘guilt-tripped’ over environment, resources minister says”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
          "text": "New Zealand’s minister for resources, Shane Jones, said he will not be guilt-tripped by “apocalyptic images” of mining and its effects on the environment put forward by his critics, as he embarks on a major mining push.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To attempt to induce a guilt trip; to cause another to feel guilt, in order to influence the behavior of that individual."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "attempt",
          "attempt"
        ],
        [
          "induce",
          "induce"
        ],
        [
          "guilt trip",
          "guilt trip"
        ],
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ],
        [
          "feel",
          "feel"
        ],
        [
          "guilt",
          "guilt"
        ],
        [
          "in order to",
          "in order to"
        ],
        [
          "influence",
          "influence"
        ],
        [
          "behavior",
          "behavior"
        ],
        [
          "individual",
          "individual"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, transitive) To attempt to induce a guilt trip; to cause another to feel guilt, in order to influence the behavior of that individual."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal",
        "transitive"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Spare Rib"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to cause another to feel guilt",
      "word": "syyllistää"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "to cause another to feel guilt",
      "word": "hacer sentir culpable"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "to cause another to feel guilt",
      "word": "hacer sentir mal por"
    }
  ],
  "word": "guilt-trip"
}

Download raw JSONL data for guilt-trip meaning in English (3.7kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-06-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-06-01 using wiktextract (5ee713e and f1c2b61). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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