(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.
Timid
Definition:
(a.) Wanting courage to meet danger; easily frightened; timorous; not bold; fearful; shy.
Example Sentences:
(1) But my timid scrunch-face puts me so behind the curve that I might as well start training carrier pigeons.
(2) The Senate’s economic references committee accused Asic of missing or ignoring persistent signs of wrongdoing , characterising it as a “timid, hesitant regulator” that was too ready to uncritically accept assurances of a large institution that there were no grounds for intervention.
(3) Confirming that he would apply to be the next commissioner of the Met, he said: "I do not believe that the men and the women of the Met were timid, which is an accusation that has been levelled at us."
(4) When the police visited Rodger, whom Brown said deputies found “rather shy, timid and polite, well-spoken”, he played down any mental problems, telling police he was having difficulties with his social life and was planning to drop out of Santa Barbara City College.
(5) Like her bolder aunt Marine, the timid Maréchal-Le Pen complained that she suffered greatly from taunts at school that her grandad was a “fascist”.
(6) Photograph: AFP Saint Laurent became an object of immediate fascination: quiet, timid, with neatly parted schoolboy hair, anxious eyes lurking behind thick glasses and a frail body encased in a tight black suit.
(7) Free-born animals are very timid and show typical flight reactions.
(8) On the left, meanwhile, we feel our way towards a progressive alliance much more timidly, even when we know we’re sunk without it.
(9) It is suspicious of the SNP's rather timid version of independence, always being described as being about "the full powers of the parliament" – which is hardly a language or outlook for transformational change.
(10) This is an international problem demanding an international response, which so far has been desperately timid.
(11) Like Cameron, who is disappointing Eurosceptics with the timidity of his reform programme, the Swiss have been forced to accede to the realities of negotiating with a much bigger player.
(12) Endogenous depressives were found to have more pronounced changes on measures of dependence and timidity, but when change in mood state was partialed out only one of the dependence measures and timidity remained significant.
(13) This kind of contacts led to a social activation especially by schizophreniacs who had a lack of drive and seemed to be regressive, also caused an increase of drive and self-reliance by formerly timid, reserved girls.
(14) Romney also took several digs at Clinton’s foreign policy record, characterizing her time with the Obama administration as “timid”.
(15) Australia have a patchy squad, but its best elements are valuable and there had been no prospect that they would lose timidly.
(16) In opposition, we were too timid about making these bigger arguments.” He has calculated that government spending on housing benefit will be £120bn over the next five years, almost £50bn of which goes to private landlords.
(17) After only a few weeks in Chile, Pinochet is finding the charms of his native land - the compliant judges, the supportive generals, the timid politicians - are not what they used to be.
(18) The sanctions imposed by western states against Russia represent a timid hope that economic hardship will make Russians resent the regime and nudge them towards active protests.
(19) It is the bold agenda against the timid one; the visionaries against those who believe Labour can limp home with a few safe offerings that can fit safely on the back of a pledge card.
(20) The Liberal Democrats are undecided (Nick Clegg calls it "timid"), the crossbenchers unlikely to co-operate.