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Welcome to the English we speak with me, Diane.

And me, Neil, have you seen that new film about a wizard who makes friends with an ugly horse that turns into a beautiful unicorn?

Oh yeah, the acting is the definition of cringe. The whole film is so cringe.

Cringe? What do you mean cringe? You don't like the film?

Don't like it. That's an understatement. It was awful. The actor who played the wizard was really terrible and the plot was stupid.

We use the word cringe when we want to say something is really embarrassing and makes us feel uncomfortable.

It can be used as a verb or an adjective.

So you can say the film made you cringe or the film was cringe. But why? It wasn't that bad.

Neil, it was so cliched. The acting was over the top and the ugly horse becoming a

beautiful unicorn didn't make any sense. It was so

cringe. But that's the point of the film. It was designed to make it cringe. It was

that kind of humor. It wasn't trying to be serious.

Oh, in that case, I didn't get it. So actually, if it was intentionally cringe, it was quite funny.

Let's talk more about things that I'll cringe after these examples.

Did you hear that terrible joke he told? It was so cringe.

When my uncle starts dancing it's really cringe.

When she told me how she had sat in the wrong meeting for an hour before

realizing I cringed.

You're listening to the English we speak from BBC Learning English

and we're talking about the word cringe. It can be used to describe something or

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