(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.
Dissident
Definition:
(a.) No agreeing; dissenting; discordant; different.
(n.) One who disagrees or dissents; one who separates from the established religion.
Example Sentences:
(1) They were preceded by the publication of The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965) and Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny and the Role of the Artist in the USSR (1969); in one, he made a hopeless mess of Picasso’s later career, though he was not alone in this; in the other, he elevated a brave dissident artist beyond his talents.
(2) The young woman is Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, then part of the new guard of dissidents and critics, now the president of Liberia.
(3) Henceforth, like many other dissidents, both open and undeclared, Mitrokhin concluded that the system was unreformable and would have to be replaced.
(4) Policing must be as robust against loyalist paramilitaries involved in violent protests over the union flag as it is towards dissident republicans, rank and file police officers have said.
(5) The regime maintains tight controls over all religious institutions in the country: Islamic, Christian, Druze etc,” said Ammar Abdulhamid , a Syrian dissident and democracy activist living in exile in Washington.
(6) In a decision described as deplorable by some, it emerged on Sunday that Athens had refused to endorse an EU statement criticising the crackdown on activists and dissidents under the Chinese president, Xi Jinping .
(7) On Thursday evening, Chinese dissident and political prisoner Liu Xiaobo died from liver cancer in a Shenyang Hospital.
(8) Jared Genser Germany went public with its anger about Beijing’s handling of Liu’s case on Monday, accusing Chinese security services of leaking surveillance footage of Liu being visited by a German doctor in order to bolster a propaganda campaign pushing the idea that the dissident was too ill to be evacuated from China.
(9) The dissident group simultaneously denies McGuinness's claims that London and Dublin have been holding secret discussions with it, and admits that such talks are necessary, although some items on their agenda – such as the conditions in which republican prisoners are held in Maghaberry prison – are more specific than others.
(10) Several Chinese dissidents took the bold step of signing a letter supporting his nomination.
(11) The dissident Gleb Yakunin excavated evidence from the KGB archives in the 1990s that fingered high-ranking priests as KGB agents, including the former head of the church, Aleksei II, and the current, Patriarch Kirill I.
(12) Then a leading dissident member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Belhaj was seized in Bangkok and handed over to the CIA, who he alleges tortured him and injected him with truth serum before flying him back to Tripoli for interrogation.
(13) The women remained defiant throughout the trial, issuing powerful closing statements that quickly entered the canon of Russia's dissident speeches.
(14) Since Sisi deposed Morsi last July following days of mass demonstrations, at least 16,000 Egyptian dissidents have been arrested, and thousands killed during protests .
(15) As critics of Mr Berlusconi have been barred from the state broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italia, Mr Fo protests that artists are being "defenestrated" metaphorically from the RAI for the same reasons that leftwing dissidents were literally thrown out of police station windows in the 1970s when Mr Fo wrote his work Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
(16) The widow of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko , who died after being poisoned in London, has "courageously" decided to continue her fight to force a public inquiry.
(17) Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director for Human Rights Watch, said Lieng's death "points to some very, very serious concerns about the kind of harassment" that relatives of dissidents face in Vietnam .
(18) Briefly imprisoned for his firebrand politicking, he later joined a group of exiles in Libya, where Muamar Gadafy was eagerly spreading his crackpot revolutionary ideas among West African dissidents.
(19) Google moved quickly to announce that it would stop censoring its Chinese service after realising dissidents were at risk from attempts to use the company's technology for political surveillance, according to a source with direct knowledge of the internet giant's most senior management.
(20) The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said the expulsions were provoked by the Kremlin's refusal to extradite the former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi, the prime suspect in the poisoning murder last November of the dissident former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko.