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0 pointsaaroninsf11y ago0 comments

I believe OP shares your sentiments, and that you mistake the usage here.

'Shame' as used here is shorthand for 'that's a shame,' which used colloquially to express disappointment colored with sympathy and understanding, does not imply that any of the nominal subjects is being criticized.

Source: I'm a native English speaker.

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Florin_Andrei11y ago

Isn't 'pity' fairly similar, or is it more commonly used in British English?

cbd198411y ago

'Pity' would be a Britishism in this context, yes.

TallGuyShort11y ago

I believe this is not the case in the US, at least in my experience. In South Africa people say "shame" to express pity for someone else (or even just when something is adorable) but when I say it hear I get weird looks :)

pdabbadabba11y ago

Native U.S. English speaker here: we do use the word "shame" as GP describes. We use "shame" both to say that someone should be ashamed and also to express general disappointment. (Though we would not use the word to talk about something that's merely adorable.) To my U.S.-English ears, swombat's use of the word "shame" seemed clearly of the "general disappointment" variety.

tomrod11y ago

In the U.S. don't we generally use "for shame" when berating?

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publicfig11y ago

No, it is definitely a case in the US. In his sentence, you could expand it to "That's a shame" or "That's a crying shame", both idioms that can express that something is "unfortunate" or "disappointing", and does not always require a blame.

ChristianBundy11y ago

I'm a native English speaker and I was born and raised in the US (specifically the Pacific Northwest), and "shame" isn't weird at all.

It's used to express disappointment – with or without blame.

TallGuyShort11y ago

Thanks for the responses everyone. I've been in the US 15 years now and I'm still never 100% sure about dialect differences :)

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