What's the difference between coy and enigmatic?

Coy


Definition:

  • (a.) Quiet; still.
  • (a.) Shrinking from approach or familiarity; reserved; bashful; shy; modest; -- usually applied to women, sometimes with an implication of coquetry.
  • (a.) Soft; gentle; hesitating.
  • (v. t.) To allure; to entice; to decoy.
  • (v. t.) To caress with the hand; to stroke.
  • (v. i.) To behave with reserve or coyness; to shrink from approach or familiarity.
  • (v. i.) To make difficulty; to be unwilling.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But when you ask Lewis what exactly the Euston Project is, the editor-in-chief, a supremely confident showman, is irritatingly coy.
  • (2) Right now he's working on another sitcom for the BBC – he's coy about what, precisely.
  • (3) He often seems mysteriously amused, cocking an eyebrow and pulling a coy, wouldn’t-you-like-to-know smirk, but he likes to laugh out loud, too.
  • (4) I ll keep one eyes on u spurs hv a good luck this season #COYS 💋🙏👊❤ September 2, 2013 8.51pm BST This is what Assou-Ekotto's got to say about developments.
  • (5) Naomi Gryn with baby Sadie Joy, who was born by elective caesarean on 31 October At first I, too, was coy about telling anyone that I was pregnant.
  • (6) The commercial coyness is long gone, and moves to monetise the audience with new forms of advertising have often provoked backlashes.
  • (7) Asked about his future plans, Götze, whose contract with Bayern runs out in 2017, remained coy.
  • (8) While the Koch brothers remain coy about their candidate preferences, a number of billionaire donors in the Koch network, including hedge fund chieftains Paul Singer and Robert Mercer, have either made large donations to Super Pacs supporting candidates, or are expected to do so.
  • (9) The Labour manifesto is a little more coy: "To encourage freedom of speech and access to information, we will bring forward new legislation on libel to protect the right of defendants to speak freely."
  • (10) He won't reveal much about the new series, beyond a coy, "Well, there's a reunion that doesn't necessarily go to plan.
  • (11) His mother is a lawyer, and although there have been coy references to what his father does (along the lines of "something to do with commodities") he's actually a vice president of Morgan Stanley.
  • (12) But what’s damaging the lives of millions of schoolgirls and women is not daft and coy terms for periods, but being unable to talk about them at all, or being so ashamed that they have to dry their sanitary cloths under the beds or in the damp, getting urinary infections or worse.
  • (13) When asked about their actual prospects in the Senate and House of Representatives, both became coy.
  • (14) I met her, and I can only say that for a couple of hours she was smart, honest and a great talker – there was no fuss, no coyness, no sham and no act.
  • (15) This is idealistic stuff at the heart of his "Communitarian Conservatism" but one increasingly senses that it is theology which really underpins the argument, and that Bond is being coy about his own Anglicanism.
  • (16) Cameron, on the other hand, is less coy about who came out on top.
  • (17) Security and defence officials are coy about what they know of specific attacks.
  • (18) The replication of an avian influenza A, Fowl plague virus (FPV), Ulster 73 strain, was studied in chick embryo fibroblasts, assumed to be the natural host, and in cells of different origin such as LLC-MK2, Hep-2, Vero, KB and Mc Coy.
  • (19) He is coy when asked whether he was also approached about a senior boardroom role at HSBC around the same time, but frank about the choice he faced when the candidate for the RBS job – former Standard Chartered boss Mervyn, now Lord, Davies – pulled out.
  • (20) Chlamydia trachomatis strains were isolated from the endocervix by the Mc Coy technique in 31 (13.4%) of 232 women aged 18 to 26 years.

Enigmatic


Definition:

  • (a.) Alt. of Enigmatical

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The molecular nature of this group of agents is enigmatic, for neither an agent-specific nucleic acid nor a non-host protein has yet been identified.
  • (2) The recent discovery that an age-old drug, colchicine, can control this enigmatic, often unrecognized, recurrent disease means that most affected individuals can now lead virtually normal lives.
  • (3) This paper suggests several possible functions for this enigmatic compound or its metabolites.
  • (4) The possible etiological factors, manifestations and therapy of the enigmatic respiratory distress syndrome are discussed.
  • (5) We aren't surprised that the Romans had nothing to say about, say, the nearby Avebury stone circle, because it's far less manifest than Stonehenge – and by extension, the oblivion of time that blankets scores of British Neolithic and bronze age sites is in keeping with our current ignorance: to this day, so few people visit them that their enigmatic character is itself underimagined.
  • (6) Nevertheless a good deal remains enigmatical and further studies will be as interesting as actual.
  • (7) He smiled enigmatically when the questions turned to Greece and the possibility of a country leaving the euro, before dismissing such talk as "not being the working assumption of mine or any government".
  • (8) "His driver was built like a bodyguard, had a mouthful of gold teeth and when I asked where he was from he answered, enigmatically, 'From up north'," said Mr Galloway.
  • (9) This paper demonstrates that beta-glucosidase can catalyse the hydrolysis of a natural glycoside, and may provide a key to understanding the function of this enigmatic enzyme.
  • (10) The poetry of Williams and Eliot and Pound demonstrated that things, assembled even as enigmatic fragments, as images without spelled-out emotional and logical connectives, give vitality to the language and immediacy to the communication between writer and reader.
  • (11) Work of the past 20 years shows that flash synchrony is widespread geographically and taxonomically, appears in an astonishing range of spectacular display types, utilizes several neural flash-control mechanisms and is pervasively but enigmatically involved in courtship.
  • (12) Here, too, Capote displayed uncanny journalistic skills, capturing even the most languid and enigmatic of subjects – Brando in his pomp – and eliciting the kinds of confidences that left the actor reflecting ruefully on his "unutterable foolishness".
  • (13) Few infectious agents have provoked the many misconceptions that plague this enigmatic parasitic ameba.
  • (14) Perilymph fistula, an abnormal communication between the inner ear and the middle ear, is an enigmatic otologic disorder which may present with auditory or vestibular symptoms.
  • (15) Enigmatic and elusive, they may have named themselves after the US video director because they enjoy his work, or it may be a wry comment on something or other.
  • (16) The rarity of the tumor, particularly with regard to the anatomical location, is impressive as well as enigmatic.
  • (17) The enigmatic epileptic-epileptoid characteristics of EEG in migraineurs could be an expression of the electrically hyperactive "quasi epileptic foci" located mainly within the brainstem and generated by the insufficient opioid inhibition of sP-ergic neurons.
  • (18) One thing that most experts agree on is that the pope is enigmatic: while he seems to espouse liberal values on some days, raising the hopes of progressive Catholics of a changing church, his staunch adherence to conservative doctrine proves that he is not the radical reformer many liberals might wish that he was.
  • (19) It is believed that the nucleoside, produced locally, exerts a modulatory role on the neurohormonal output via still enigmatic mechanisms, involving a transmembranous carrier.
  • (20) The enigmatic patience of the sentences, the pedantic syntax, the peculiar antiquity of the diction, the strange recessed distance of the writing, in which everything seems milky and sub-aqueous, just beyond reach – all of this gives Sebald his particular flavour, so that sometimes it seems that we are reading not a particular writer but an emanation of literature.

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