(a.) Very modest, or modest excess; constitutionally disposed to shrink from public notice; indicating extreme or excessive modesty; shy; as, a bashful person, action, expression.
Example Sentences:
(1) Someone close to the trust told me in the autumn, "Both parties are bashing the BBC – it used to alternate – but the Tories may have done a bigger deal with [longstanding BBC foe Rupert] Murdoch than Labour did in the mid-90s.
(2) They complained that while in Washington Cameron launched another round of Brussels-bashing when he was supposed to be promoting the merits of a potential gamechanging trade pact between the EU and the US.
(3) Last week Lebedev posted photos from his Hampton Court bash on his personal LiveJournal blog .
(4) In the end, Miliband's measures have a psychological effect not dissimilar to the youth-bashing policies that have come before: student fees, cuts to the education maintenance allowance and housing benefit for the under-25s , and the prioritising of private landlords at the expense of affordable housing.
(5) But at least it was offering something positive, not just bashing the Tories, like everything else.” But for many, it was symbolic of a vague and complacent Labour campaign strategy that would, ultimately, doom them to one of their worst ever election defeats.
(6) There is the Usdaw reception in the Hilton on Sunday, the Communication Workers Union drinks on Monday and a Unison bash on Tuesday.
(7) They are the only party which has refused to be drawn into the immigrant-bashing competition with the others, and the only which proposes a vote in the general elections for EU citizens based on residency, rather than nationality.
(8) For example, it's fashionable to continually bash the Taliban regarding women, especially when a massive Western army has invaded, but remain silent over women who suffer under Western foreign policies (I posted a link of a young Syrian woman being strangled in public, but it was deleted instantly).
(9) Swing your gaze from the aged and infirm to your fit and healthy peers here and abroad embracing fascism and poor-bashing.
(10) But Panmure's Zonneveld isn't so bashful - - he's got a target price of 570p.
(11) Jindal bashed the debate moderators to a crowd of roughly 50, saying: “The mainstream media lost the debate.” He went on to say that the GOP should take “a free market approach” to debates and “have as many debates as possible and let candidates decide which ones they should go to”.
(12) OFFICE COST PER DESK $10,430 pa Banker-bashing rating ■ ZURICH PROS The financial sector accounts for 6% of all jobs in Switzerland and 16% of tax revenue.
(13) If it means bashing your head against the wall, or whatever.
(14) I thought bashing bureaucrats was purely my domain.
(15) Theresa May has been accused of irresponsible “civil service bashing” by the mandarins’ union after using an interview to criticise Whitehall staff.
(16) But I will also defend my record, and will not take lectures on “the politics of division” from parties that bash immigrants and those on welfare benefits, or from politicians disgraced by expenses scandals, discredited by lies told to justify war, and intent on scapegoating the vulnerable in our society for an economic crisis caused by the most powerful.
(17) Downing Street has refused to release the guest list for this year's bash at the private Hurlingham members' club in Fulham, west London, but the gleaming Rolls-Royces and Jaguars streaming through the gates gave a hint of the wealthy passengers heading inside.
(18) Capitalism took a bashing in 2015: Corbynomics , the rise of anti-austerity parties Podemos and Syriza, Hillary Clinton slamming our culture of short-termism, COP21 protests and more.
(19) For many years afterwards, the family bashed their heads against a brick wall of indifference and worse.
(20) Debate moderators Anderson Cooper, Dana Bash, and Juan Carlos Lopez are sure to ask some tough questions of the candidates.
Diffident
Definition:
(a.) Wanting confidence in others; distrustful.
(a.) Wanting confidence in one's self; distrustful of one's own powers; not self-reliant; timid; modest; bashful; characterized by modest reserve.
Example Sentences:
(1) The Observer of the mid-1950s resembled nothing so much as a giant seminar conducted by the soft-spoken and diffident, yet steely, figure of David Astor.
(2) The main factor, however, is presumably not primness or diffidence but the chart's timeframe.
(3) Physically, he has a sort of wiry poise, often standing on the balls of his feet, but there is also something diffident, almost shyly polite, about him.
(4) In conversation, he is a curious mix of openness and a sweet, faintly diffident shyness.
(5) Diffident technically, she none the less doggedly pursued the detail of the execution of her scenery and costumes: she got what she needed.
(6) Wouldn't we rather our film writers be morally engaged viewers rather than diffident aesthetes?
(7) She too is a sceptic, but has been drawn to watch diffident Corbyn – potentially her future leader.
(8) His maiden speech came on his second day as an MP, in the debate on the address – intervening, he suggested improbably, with feelings of diffidence: "I am convinced that the key to all our hopes and aspirations in the field of economic activity lies in the maintenance and improvement of industrial relationships," he said.
(9) They were difficult because of the language barrier, which required exclusive use of interpreters, and because of the diffidence of the women themselves, especially in discussing matters of sex and childbearing.
(10) He is an odd, diffident sort of ambassador, spreading the message about "the Finnish miracle" but not really believing in the data that supposedly proves that it works.
(11) It stars Tom Hollander as a diffident, gaffe-prone British minister who is packed off to Washington DC, where he becomes a pawn in the political opposition to the war.
(12) And soon he was among them, grinning his diffident chipmunk smile, with his wife, a striking vision in white and red, beside him.
(13) A magnet for media coverage around the world thanks to his entrepreneurial success and love of a photo opportunity, Branson can be surprisingly diffident in person.
(14) He was too nervous – petrified before a big case, and diffident about his own abilities.
(15) At 43, he still looked boyish, with his questioning eyes, a thatch of hair and diffident mumbles.
(16) The media glamourised professional women who decided to have children while pursuing demanding careers, and warned women who put off having children that they would regret their diffidence later.
(17) Like Henry, whom Wenger signed as a diffident winger from Juventus in his early twenties in 1999, Welbeck has arrived at Arsenal after doing more running than scoring at Manchester United with the invitation to develop in a more favoured central attacking role.
(18) That diffidence is evident on screen, in Mia's core of vulnerability, the lonely anguish she camouflages with violence and filthy language.
(19) The man whose motto is a diffident "just messin' about" talks with unguarded passion about the process of music-making.
(20) In 1991, Gavin Millar filmed Call For The Dead's successor A Murder Of Quality, with Denholm Elliott as Smiley, his nervous diffidence dovetailing perfectly with the character.