(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.
Prudish
Definition:
(a.) Like a prude; very formal, precise, or reserved; affectedly severe in virtue; as, a prudish woman; prudish manners.
Example Sentences:
(1) Much of his work – including National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Meatballs (1979) and Ghostbusters (1984), all of which he co-wrote, and Caddyshack (1980), which he co-wrote and directed – changed the course of US film comedy, even if the prudish might argue that it was not for the better.
(2) This can be surprising to the relatively prudish mainstream of previous generations.
(3) Read says that while his father operated in louche artistic circles and had "ditched his first wife to be with my mother, slightly in the liberated spirit of Shelley or Gauguin", he had been born and brought up in the 19th century and deep down had a "rather prudish" approach to life.
(4) Recent news regarding Ira Sachs’ new film Love Is Strange is a prime example of how age classification systems can smother art under bigoted and prudish anxieties.
(5) Emin's beautiful body is her one great idea, but I suspect that she is rather prudish, which means that there are limits to the use she can make of her body and its rackety past.
(6) I worry because I find myself siding with Don over Megan and given the selfish, prudish, treachorous, patriarchal figure he is I know this ain't right.
(7) Apart from physiological flushes represented by emotional or prudish blushing, post-prandial flushes and menopausal hot flushes, various pathologic flushes exist of various etiologies: endocrine, dysmetabolic, histaminic and iatrogenic.
(8) Liekens has said the UK has been "too prudish for too long" about sex education.
(9) For a humorist who came on the scene in the 1960s, Coren was surprisingly prudish.
(10) In the UK, we are still slightly discomfited by the idea of baring all in a confessional essay, partly, one presumes, because we are restrained by a sort of cultural prudishness, but also because we do not wish to appear self-indulgent.
(11) I had friends who lost their virginity at 13, and I’d be like, ‘Disgusting!’” Despite her prudishness, as soon as Peake started to act, she was stereotyped.
(12) I half shouted to a rep, ‘I’m not singing that’ and he said ‘yeah it is a bit naughty’, as if I was being prudish.
(13) I am asking, if Christianity managed to imbue Anglo-Saxon cultures with this prudishness, why did the moral strictures of any other religious system not imbue their cultures?"
(14) "You don't think Islam has had just as much an effect on prudishness?"
(15) Facebook has been accused of a lot of things, from riding roughshod over people’s privacy to prudishly censoring the most innocuous of photographs.
(16) She will insist she is not arguing for "prudishness or hankering after some rose-tinted picture of childhood", but for families and children that can negotiate issues of sexuality with dignity and respect.
(17) It is hard to imagine a scandal of Claridge’s proportions kicking off over here – not because Americans are less prudish than Brits, but because breastfeeding in public is clearly just a scheduling issue, and if New Yorkers understand anything it’s the Primacy of the Schedule.
(18) 'I'm really not prudish about doing nudity,' she continues.
(19) Galleguillos said his tweets – calling Rentería a “weeping negrito” and attacking “prudish, timid hypocrites” – were sent “in good faith … I called him negrito with affection, caringly, because he cried, the man cried.
(20) Experts warned that Seek McCartney’s approval should not necessarily be hailed as a sign of a relaxation of censors’ usually prudish attitudes.