"cringing" in the verb sense
1. flinch, squinch, funk, cringe, shrink, wince, recoil, quail
draw back, as with fear or pain
"she flinched when they showed the slaughtering of the calf"
2. fawn, crawl, creep, cringe, cower, grovel
show submission or fear
"cringing" in the adjective sense
1. cringing, groveling, grovelling, wormlike, wormy
totally submissive
Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)
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