How To Use Diffident In A Sentence
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Lee's was the voice of the teenage nonconformist, looking for kicks in a boring suburb, diffident at best about the family structures by which he was nevertheless completely defined.
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Phoebe contributed little to the talk, as a good deal of it was in Dutch and she felt sure that anything she might have to say would bear little weight with Corina, She offered more coffee, undertook to see that both her guests would be called betimes and asked diffidently if she could help Corina to pack.
A Summer Idyll
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For those who are rather diffident about facing a public examination, there are helpful ‘proxy writers’ available.
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Emotionally diffident, he lacks the physical and dramatic force to invest the role with heroism.
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`Oh, well,' he shrugged diffidently, `I like the work.'
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Lucky ones who had bought of it diffidently, discreetly, with modest visions of four and a half per cent in their unimaginative minds, saw their dividends doubling, trebling, quadrupling, finally soaring gymnastically beyond all reason.
Fanny Herself
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The very sight of him hovering diffidently in the corner of a room - with his beard and his home-trimmed hair and his schoolboyish little collar poking out of the top of his hand-knitted sweater and his palpable conscientious desperation not to cause any offence to anyone whatsoever - could make a red-blooded woman lose the will to live.
Woodcraft Folk Memories
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Imprimis autem doceant suos, quibus sese alant, artes honestas, abstrahant ab otio, et veram in his omnibus fiduciam in Deum inserant, ne diffidentia ant securitate nimia aut avaritia foeda diffluant, nec ad ullum fructum perveniant.
The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches.
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With his geeky look and diffident, nervy demeanour, he is best known for dark roles.
Times, Sunday Times
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After reading her views on the debate, it makes me wish I had something weighty or political to say, but I'm a little diffident about the whole thing.
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There are also shy extroverts, who function well in typical social situations but become diffident in intimate encounters or in situations where it is not possible to follow a social script.
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Dostoevsky evinced the conviction of having been divinely commissioned in a manner that was diffident, almost shy, and utterly devoid of braggadocio.
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Despite his quiet, diffident manner, the Humberside police chief is becoming used to an unflattering limelight.
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Far from being arrogant, today's doctors are diffident and afflicted by insecurity and self-doubt.
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With diffident reluctance, she rose from her seat and went to where her outer robe hung; a wooden peg set in the near wall.
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stood in the doorway diffident and abashed
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We came suddenly to the gate of the lodge and Locksley the caretaker greeted us diffidently in his knit hat and muddy Wellingtons.
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No praise is too high for a man whose somewhat diffident public persona masks a character who is as tough as nails.
The Sun
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Rattigan reinforces the point by contrasting Alma's brash, self-confident lover, George, with Edith's sexually diffident son who is the same age but driven to seek worldly experience with a prostitute.
Review | Old Vic | Cause Célèbre | Michael Billington
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There's always been something rather diffident about Lively.
Times, Sunday Times
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Ford's figures are reflective, capable of ironic detachment, and can be both enthused and diffident at the same time.
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He is unfailingly friendly, diffident and self-deprecating with an old-fashioned sense of fair play.
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He was modest and diffident about his own success.
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With no one to listen to them, they get trapped in their problems and grow up diffident and unsure of their abilities.
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No praise is too high for a man whose somewhat diffident public persona masks a character who is as tough as nails.
The Sun
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Diffident, stupid with fatigue, she stood blinking.
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The tenor in these passages is assertive, quite at odds with the almost diffident tone of the rest of the book.
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But, although Mary was a blushing and sensitive person, she was not what is commonly called a diffident girl; -- her nerves had that healthy, steady poise which gave her presence of mind in the most unwonted circumstances.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 20, June, 1859
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The discipline that journalists have been most diffident about is economics.
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The muff is a boy who from natural disposition, or early training, or both, is mild, diffident, and gentle.
The Gorilla Hunters
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He looked rather sheepish and diffident, hands in pockets and a nervous grin on his face.
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You become anxious, and this in turn causes you to become diffident, which consequently kills your body's alacrity.
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The word diffident has appeared in 72 New York Times articles in the past year, including on Sept. 2 in How to Choose and
NYT > Home Page
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The tenor in these passages is definitive and assertive, quite at odds with the unassuming, almost diffident, tone of the rest of the book.
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Ironic, too, that he's diffident to the point of sheepishness, even in front of the most adoring audience.
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All this lends a rather diffident tone to her memoir.
The Times Literary Supplement
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For much of the time he appeared to be an ego in retreat, his manner diffident and apparently shy.
Times, Sunday Times
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The change between the diffident, round-shouldered little brother to this long legged, broad shouldered, hulked out fighting machine happens in a blink, and it is marvelous.
Supernatural: Swan Song - Pink Raygun.com
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In his black, boatlike cockaded hat, his hawkish face fierce and unyielding in the streaming storm, Jones must have seemed like a madman compared with the diffident or easygoing merchant captains most sailors were accustomed to.
John Paul Jones
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Far from being diffident, gratulatory or admiring, patients may bubble with entitlement, seethe with rage and insist on constant approval.
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There was a rustle of straw in the corner of the chamber, illumined by a shaft of diffident sunlight that looked as though it had got up far too early, and a tousled head poked out, squinting bleary eyes into the dusty gloom.
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He looked rather sheepish and diffident, hands in pockets and a nervous grin on his face.
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A champion of women's education in the truly liberal sense, he helped many a shy diffident young woman face the academic world.
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Dating agencies were once sniggered at as the last resort of those too diffident, dull or undesirable to find a partner in the normal course of their social life.
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Diffident, brusque and self-effacing to the point of invisibility, he was not the first person you would choose if you wanted to mount a charm offensive.
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When the Utes, whose village was nearby, had come diffidently back to trade, Tasmin had been too focused on Pomp and his fever to pay attention to what went on in camp, but now that she saw their attackers milling around among the mountain men, exchanging peltries for hatchets, tobacco, blue and green beads, she felt incensed.
The Berrybender Narratives
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There was a knock on the door, and Elspeth joined Darkwind as Tremane's aide-now styled his "seneschal," though he still acted and probably thought of himself as a military aide-de-camp-entered diffidently.
Storm Breaking
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Like leaves before the wind, the boys rushed out by a back door into the play-ground, while the master solemnly passed to his house, with a deep slow bow to the ladies; and there was poor Scudamore -- most diffident of men whenever it came to lady-work -- left to face the visitors with a pleasing knowledge that his neckcloth was dishevelled, and his hair sheafed up, the furrows of his coat broadcast with pounce, and one of his hands gone to sleep from holding a heavy Delphin for three-quarters of an hour.
Springhaven : a Tale of the Great War
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And under the quiet narration is even gentler music, music that strives to be subliminal, tinkled on a parlor piano and diffidently accompanied by a fiddle or banjo.
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Radcliffe is witty and entertaining, but talks in diffident stops and starts.
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With no one to listen to them, they get trapped in their problems and grow up diffident and unsure of their abilities.
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A guerilla warfare, such as throve in Spain, must surely be crushed in her open plains; and the diffident King returned
The Life of Napoleon I (Volume 2 of 2)
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Well Miss Mollie I had a good laugh at the Sergt Maj When I told him what you wrotehe is such a modest young man, it made him blush. he is perfectly carried a way and if you send many more such messages to him he will go up the Spot. but I have not much fears about you & his Lordship [unclear: getting] married for this reason. he is so very diffident and your shiness of man; Will make it a matter of impossibility to get up a match With out calling in the Third person & of course that Will be my self, of course, and of course, you Will find out that I will do all in my Power to brake up the match as I have an Intrist in your future Welfare myself.
Augusta County: James H. Blakemore to Mary Anna Sibert, September 11, 1864
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Far from being arrogant, today's doctors are diffident and afflicted by insecurity and self-doubt.
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I was thrilled at the prospect ahead of me but diffident and embarrassed at joining a community so totally unfamiliar.
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She is neither diffident nor boastful about this fact.
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Here is video of Karl Rove talking with British TV Sky News, where he said that President Barack Obama is "diffident" when it comes to the details of the massive legislation he is pushing through Congress.
Latest Articles
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Someone who had been 'a remarkably undogmatic man, unassuming and even diffident in manner' became obstinate in the extreme.
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His son, dark like his father, who made his first diffident pilgrimages in the sunny close where the pigeons cooed, was not more thirled to English soil.
The Path of the King
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Scudamore — most diffident of men whenever it came to lady-work — left to face the visitors with a pleasing knowledge that his neckcloth was dishevelled, and his hair sheafed up, the furrows of his coat broadcast with pounce, and one of his hands gone to sleep from holding a heavy Delphin for three-quarters of an hour.
Springhaven
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Dr. Abou El Fadl looked, by the way, nothing like the image evoked by "Egyptian dissident," being kind of hunched over, diffident, mumbly, and short.
Kenneth Hite's Journal
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Middle- and lower-class women travelling overseas with and for their menfolk could be less diffident.
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History
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He was as diffident as you would expect, and, as with most famous people, my main thought upon seeing him in the flesh was that he looked just like he does on television.
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Perhaps he was too amiable, too diffident and conciliatory in his approach.
The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877
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Do you know," Thorpe began again, with a kind of diffident hesitation -- "do you happen to have formed an idea -- supposing that had been the case -- would she have accepted him?
The Market-Place
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He was diffident about his achievements, in contrast to the self-aggrandisement common to autobiographers.
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We are told, and can well believe it, that he was "diffident" of Sir Walter's designs.
Some Diversions of a Man of Letters
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His capacity for taking the mickey out of defences was also legendary even though he could be diffident in front of goal in a way that Finney would have found unnatural.
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Mr. V.V. stood by a spindly table, carefully examining a small but costly vase, the property of Mr. Heth, of the Cheroot Works; and now he went on with a kind of diffident resolution, the air of one who gives a confidence with difficulty, but must do so now, for his honor.
V. V.'s Eyes
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Despite a shy and diffident manner,(Sentence dictionary) Davison was a hard-working and gifted teacher of endless patience.
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I am fond of a diffident way which I see you to exhibit.
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His one spiritual ally is an outcast like himself: a dignified, ageless, diffident, white-haired refugee in rimless spectacles and a shabby suit who teaches German Extra Studies and cello and lives alone in a redbrick bedsitter on the Bristol Road roundabout.
Absolute Friends
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Perhaps he was too amiable, too diffident and conciliatory in his approach.
The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877
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American Splendor has, in its sarky and diffident way, some pretty serious things to say about the disaffected and the disenfranchised in American society, alienated from their jobs and their lives.
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But the businessmen who are the driving force behind the TECs may feel diffident about administering a chunk of the welfare state.
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They are, with good reason, less diffident and less fearful.
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But this was before I had reached what I will call the diffident period in the life of a writer.
Aylwin
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He had new and good clothes on, and was handsome and had a winning face and a pleasant voice, and was easy and graceful and unembarrassed, not slouchy and awkward and diffident, like other boys.
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My experience suggests that the lay member's views on legal questions, though diffidently expressed, can also sometimes be helpful.
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They would become "pert," as pages were supposed to be, and diffident as esquires, but as knights they would come back of themselves to the perfect ways of their childhood with a grace that became well the strength and self-possession of their knighthood.
The Education of Catholic Girls
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If, indeed, such weapons there had been, Maud Elliott, the most reserved and diffident girl of her acquaintance, -- "stiff and pokerish," Ella called her, --- was the last person likely to employ them.
A Love Story Reversed 1898
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I am blaming the fact it's St George's day for my refusal to complain - what could be more English than feeling too diffident to complain about receiving an awful haircut?
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The old, merry Whiting looked sideways at Richard, then the round face assumed an expression of diffident humility for Mr. Hanks.
Morgan’s Run
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He's the kind of diffident youth who would have to be VERY sure before he ventured an opinion at all.
Secret Adversary
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He made sure that his furniture received the maximum publicity at international fairs, although he came across as a surprisingly diffident and modest man.
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And on being told that we felt no doubt, her diffident mind seemed comforted; "but," she added, "I want assurance: I hope; but I don't feel sure -- I do _hope_ in Christ.
A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England
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she was diffident when offering a comment on the professor's lecture
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And his diffident manner should not be mistaken for a lack of energy.
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Despite a shy and diffident manner, Davison was a hard-working and gifted teacher of endless patience.
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Thirty years later he is still embarrassed or diffident every time he is confronted with even a simple practical task.
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Perhaps he was too amiable, too diffident and conciliatory in his approach.
The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877
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In downtown black, by turns diffident, mischievous, impulsive, even arrogant, she's scrumptious, and the sheep aren't.
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He is, accordingly, by turns bumptious, diffident, selfish, generous, thoughtless, befuddled and acute.