​The study examines the factors that shape the metaphoric conceptualization of shame in Russian and Jordanian Arabic (JA). The study adopts Conceptual Metaphor Theory as based on main meaning focus (Kövecses 2011) as its theoretical framework. Data were collected from two types of sources: social platform pages (VKontakte, Facebook) and informants’ responses (20 native speakers of Russian and JA). The data collected from both sources were manually analyzed using a qualitative approach and employing MIP and Steen’s five-step procedure (2007). We argue that a) shame in Russian and JA is conceptualized through common source domains (physical weight, stain/dirt, hidden place, physical damage or pain, pursuer/hunter, curse, and inheritable legacy)  and culture-specific domains for Russian (fire, cold, black hole) and JA (blackening of face, throwing ʕga:l ‘traditional Arab headband’, physical size); b) the main meaning focus of Russian and JA metaphors of shame can arise from both predetermined similarities and contrastive contexts, which highlights the importance of cross-cultural research on this emotion.​