The other day I was reading a politically oriented article about guess what (the big topic in the U.S. right now...health care) and the author used the term "shameful." I then began to wonder about the difference between "shameful" and "shameless" and didn't see much, even though one might think them opposite terms (with "ful" and "less"). Do you use them differently? If so, how?

An unscrupulous act committed by someone is a shameful one; his doing it without qualms is shameless. Yeah, I think there's a difference.

For Tiger Woods to have sex with women other than his wife is shameful. To do it on the eighteenth green at the Masters would be shameless.

The Tiger Woods Story

My wife’s attitude I would inflame less
If I tucked things away. I’d be blameless,
But the babes in the bar
Carry flirting too far
And their conduct is really quite shameless.

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quote:

Yeah, I think there's a difference.

I don't always think they're used differently, though.

I think it's a matter of who is making the ethical judgment. With a shameful event or activity, it can be either the person doing it or a third party, but a shameless person does not judge what he's doing as shameful. That is the third party's judgment.

Proofreader, it's not Woods' fault if, being a golfer, women want to see his driver.

They all said something about his putts.

That's a good point, z. I wish I would have written down the comment which made me wonder about it. I can't even remember where it was right now, but from z's analysis, I am assuming they should have used "shameless" because clearly there is a lot of shameless propaganda going on these days.