Search pages and navigate
Why JLPT N1 learners mix up 見っともない (みっともない, “shameful; indecent”) and 決まり悪い (きまりわるい, “feeling awkward; being ashamed”).
Both describe social embarrassment. Shameful (見っともない) behavior directly causes one to feel awkward (決まり悪い) or ashamed, leading learners to confuse the external behavior with the internal feeling it produces.
On JLPT N1, this pair shows up as a vocabulary meaning question. You see one word and pick its English equivalent from four options — one of which will be the other word in this pair, chosen as a distractor precisely because of the overlap.
Reading the explanation is step one. Targeted practice is what actually moves a confusion pair out of your weak list. Free, no signup needed to try.
Practice N1 confusion pairsSpot a mistake in this explanation? Email us. Explanations are AI-generated and human-reviewed; corrections welcome.