(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.
Modesty
Definition:
(n.) The quality or state of being modest; that lowly temper which accompanies a moderate estimate of one's own worth and importance; absence of self-assertion, arrogance, and presumption; humility respecting one's own merit.
(n.) Natural delicacy or shame regarding personal charms and the sexual relation; purity of thought and manners; due regard for propriety in speech or action.
Example Sentences:
(1) "It is not a likeable work," ran one unfavourable review, "containing little humour or tenderness or modesty.
(2) Clearly recovered from her attack of British modesty, she jumps out of an SUV in denim shorts and a crop top, her voice almost completely lost.
(3) Against all the odds, he almost single-handedly rescued hundreds of children, mostly Jewish, from the Nazis – an enduring example of the difference that good people can make even in the darkest of times.” “Because of his modesty, this astonishing contribution only came to light many years later.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sir Nicholas Winton meeting some of the (now grown up) children he helped save.
(4) This was a galaxy-spanning utopia whose name was chosen for its self-deprecating modesty, rather than something grandiose like the Federation or the Empire.
(5) Principal component analysis was used to identify five clothing dimensions (experimentation, self-enhancement, conformity, economics and practicality, and modesty), two body satisfaction dimensions (face and extremities, midsection and weight), and two eating dimensions (drive for thinness and binging).
(6) Whatever veiled women say about modesty, tradition or feeling closer to God, we in the £5-aspirant group worry that they are oppressed: that it is about being hidden and silenced.
(7) "The gentleman, opening the circular, hinged portcullis on the front of his helmet, offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without further delay and carried her down the hill."
(8) And when you see Portman naked and leaning in profile on a dresser, she's posed deliberately, artfully, bony elbows protecting her modesty.
(9) Their letter, written in terms of false modesty, almost as if their aim was to protect Mr Brown, not destroy him, lacked any ideological substance.
(10) Interviews were conducted with 85 Puerto-Rican-born women encountered in one urban community in the United States concerning their obstetrical and gynecological preventive health participation, modesty pattern, and feelings of being male dominated.
(11) Mention of it brings on another attack of modesty – "No matter how bad a music video, the song remains intact" – but his videos are weird and intriguing.
(12) New York Times editors don't do modesty, Abramson no exception.
(13) His modesty showed when he declined an invitation to attend the ceremonies marking the 1994 signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.
(14) Those sentiments had been echoed in the seemingly very different context of Qom, the centre of Shia religious studies, where most women move about in full-length black cloaks – the chadors that are the ultimate expression of Shia modesty.
(15) But the modesty isn’t the problem, it’s the listening.
(16) It received 80,000 responses and delivered a landmark 630-page report in 29 days, calling for the law concerning sexual violence to be modernised, removing terms such as “intent to outrage her modesty”.
(17) When I take Viagra, it stands up.” B: “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.” On modesty A: “I do not have brilliance, wit or smartness.
(18) In a small side room at the Guardian, with Al Pacino glowering from a poster above us, James Corden is performing a masterclass in modesty.
(19) Prestige was regained by workers, who originally were thought to have lost their honor by violating the cultural patterns of seclusion and modesty.
(20) We conjecture that for highly religious women modernising factors raise the risk and temptation in women’s environments that imperil their reputation for modesty: veiling would then be a strategic response, a form either of commitment to prevent the breach of religious norms or of signalling women’s piety to their communities.