guilt-trip

• guilt trip

Denominal verb of guilt trip. First use appears c. 1977 in the defunct periodical Spare Rib.

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.

   to guilt-trip someone into [doing] something

   • 1999, David A. Shapiro, Choosing the Right Thing to Do, page 136:

     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.

   • 2007, Ronald Potter-Efron, Rage: A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Explosive Anger, page 106:

     First, he tries to guilt-trip her into taking them.

   • 2011, Brian Goins, Playing Hurt: A Guy's Strategy for a Winning Marriage, page 18:

     In this book, I don't want to guilt-trip you into action.

   • 2024 July 20, Maureen Dowd, “Lord Almighty, Joe, Let It Go!”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     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.

   • 2025 May 26, Eva Corlett, quoting Shane Jones, “New Zealand will not be ‘guilt-tripped’ over environment, resources minister says”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     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.