the.com/stigma

means A mark of disgrace attached to a person, quality, or circumstance that sets them apart in the eyes of others, usually unfairly.

from From Greek 'stigma' meaning a mark made by a pointed instrument — literally a tattoo or brand burned into the skin of slaves and criminals to mark them as disgraced. The word traveled through Latin into English still carrying that hot-iron sense, then cooled into metaphor: by the 17th century it named a mark of shame that needed no actual branding iron, just society's eye doing the burning instead.