кринж (krinzh)

What it means

1. 1.

   Cringe — the specific embarrassment of watching someone humiliate themselves without realising it. Borrowed wholesale from English internet usage around 2020.

2. 2.

   Fully naturalised grammatically: it declines like a Russian noun, gives the adjective кринжовый and the verb кринжевать. Anyone over thirty-five using it is usually quoting their children.

Examples with translations

• Посмотрел его сторис — такой кринж.

  I watched his stories — absolute cringe.

• Не надо, это кринжово.

  Don't — that's just embarrassing.

Where it comes from

English 'cringe', imported through YouTube and TikTok commentary rather than through written English, which is why it arrived already meaning the internet sense rather than the physical flinch.

First attested: around 2019

Other forms

Romanised as:

krinzh