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Use bashful in a sentence

Definition of bashful:

  • (adjective) self-consciously timid | shy | not liking to be noticed
  • (verb) be silly or tease one another

Sentence Examples:

He was preoccupied and a trifle bashful.

At first the men had been bashful swains.

At this the bashful merman began to blubber.

All that splendor is smirching the bashful mud!

He turns and beholds Esther, bashful, shame-faced, metamorphosed.

Then the boy would withdraw into bashful sullenness.

The Austrians appear to be somewhat shamefaced and bashful.

Their bashful silence gave consent to the barefaced proposition.

They were not bashful those thieves of the sandstorm.

Yet those same bashful fellows are ofttimes the bravest.

He sings perhaps of the kind, but bashful shepherdess.

I shall feel very bashful about singing to an Italian gentleman.

Sir Howard admired his favorite, his diffidence and bashful coyness.

"Englishmen are so bashful," apologized Patty; "I didn't want to frighten him."

Said Maggie, recovering herself, and smiling at the bashful Dutch doll.

They are bashful lads and will hardly eat a bowlful of soup.

There was enough hot color in his face to make it boyishly bashful.

Fanny, to whom Tiff punctiliously referred the question, gave a bashful consent.

Answering the summons she found a bashful young German on the step.

The fire flamed up, and Jimmy, with a bashful and deprecatory "Gosh!"

Snobs and prigs do the first; bashful and mean people do the second.

Said the girl, who seemed to think that this bashful northerner needed encouragement.

Women have sharp instincts, and since they require wooing, despise too bashful swains.

Such a one could give confidence to bashful merit, and confusion to overbearing impudence.

"I see she's a bashful puss, but she'll feel better acquainted one of these days."

A man of the finest sensibilities and unbounded benevolence, but bashful as a maiden.

She was touchingly bashful, so that at one time Clara had offered to befriend her.

Hymen and Felicity stand with us here ready to unite two amorous and bashful lovers.

I wish he had not been too bashful to ask for victuals to take with him.

The women were at first somewhat bashful, but the king desired them to be frolicsome.

He curtsied to the duke, mimicking with much drollery the bashful manners of a servant-wench.

The earnest importunity of the females urges the bashful youth to eat more and more.

That is from modesty and timidity, and her gait must also be bashful and maidenly.

"It'll spoil it for all of us if you don't come," he said, with bashful surliness.

She was all smiles, and sighs, and bashful coyness; he all tenderness and fire.

He could not endure blatancy; his admiration was to be won only by a bashful hero.

Our wives were innocent of crime; they were virtuous, honest, bashful girls, unused to public life.

As he said this, he looked piercingly at the lad, who cast down bashful eyes of blue.

Men are offish and bashful and do not always know what is best for them.

The first refuge of the inexperienced, bashful person is often to assume a manner of extreme hauteur.

In proportion as she found her youthful adorer more bashful, her own audacity and coolness increased.

Maybe he finks Bessie would be too bashful to read before him if she fought he was awake.

He had freckles, too, and he was so bashful that his voice blushed when he used it.

She was too shy and bashful to give me the sign the coquette might have deemed befitting.

Then she took to questioning him, with bashful inquisitiveness, upon the details of his approaching marriage.

Her eyes encountered his, and she blushed to her temples, an enchanting picture of bashful confusion.

He was passionate, eloquent, effusive; she was bashful, simpering, and lackadaisical, as became a pensioned Higgins.

He had an especially sweet and pathetic voice, with a little quaver in it, like a bashful girl's.

It is bashful, for nature is ever so; but it is not prudish, for only corruption is prudish.

Men are bashful and offish, and do not always know what is the best for them.

Are they dumb, or tongue-tied, or have they temporarily lost their voices; or, are they only bashful?

It was a deep delight to her to look for the arrival of her bashful and unconfessed adorer.

He remained at home, a broken-hearted, bashful boy, without stamina enough to come out and confront a wicked world.

There were pictures on the wall, portraits of grave-looking porpoises, bashful seals, and smug and smiling walruses.

I was as bashful as a girl, and as they soon perceived this, I was unmercifully rallied upon it.

To a bashful and sensitive youth, just out of a country home, the sight of such violence was appalling.

Once when I was a callow, bashful cub, I took a plain, unsentimental country girl to a comedy one night.

I had a piece of spring chicken, but being too bashful to masticate it properly, I attempted to swallow it whole.

The selections given were sweet enough to summon the most bashful friends of the medium from their spiritualistic retreat.

He seemed bashful, though jolly, but somehow not so elated over the prize as she had thought he would be.

To that bashful maiden, conscious of her gawkiness, the darkly bright eyes seemed awful as the front of Jove himself.

He stood as though spell-bound, listening to the rich, mellow tones of the bashful lad from among the hills.

Now this is no overwrought scene, but one which could easily have happened to any bashful, awkward, disconcerted young person.

Does he look at it out of the sides of his eyes, like a bashful, barn-yard bantam, or dare he not look at all?

Her real character had broken through the veils of idealism in which in girlish bashful modesty she had enshrouded herself.

The bashful stutterer talks with the grace and fire of Demosthenes, and the wasted invalid regains his pristine vigor.

The letters to Elizabeth were a tremendous labor, for Davie was no speller, and always bashful in the presence of ink.

Thirty years he had been there, he said, and fingered his white locks as a bashful child pulls out his pinafore.

In the same manner as she adored him without any garrulous effusiveness, he felt a secret, almost bashful, affection for her.

Tell me, my bashful maiden, why is beauty given us, unless it be like sunlight to bless and gladden the world?

His retiring, bashful manner was somewhat disconcerting, but beneath it there was the unmistakable evidence of birth, breeding and dignity.

And then, his eyes falling upon the figure of the bashful youth, he added: "Prithee, who is the stripling at your heels?"

At first Roger was a little bashful about going to houses peddling, for he had never done that sort of thing before.

Already something stirred within him, and yet, stolid as he was, bashful among the collegians, he was apparently the same.

Walter Scott insists that Dryden was at heart serious, that "his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful man."

A man with savoir faire may scintillate in a crowd, but it takes a "bashful man" to shine in a dim cozy corner.

Walter Scott insists that Dryden was at heart serious, that "his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful man."

My only prospect was that of a dreary bachelorhood; and Captain Carey's bashful exultation made the future seem less tolerable to me.

Her color did not change, while her expression was neither bashful nor bold, and unnatural only in its entire naturalness.

With a bashful mixture of simplicity and archness, the young damsel answered, "I told him I liked white kids very much."

He hobbled down the pebbly bank on his tender feet, his bashful grin breaking into a dozen contortions of pain as he went.

"He was a very bashful young man," said an old lady, whom he used to visit when they were both in their nonage.

She studied him curiously on the various occasions when they met, and, finding him bashful and recessive, set out to lure him.

The bashful one had screwed tiny spurs into the heels of her high boots and given her a light quirt, or whip.

"Speak up, chuff, now," is the adjuration of the parent to the bashful child who has just been addressed by the quality.

A good mother, on the other hand, is exercised because her little son is so bashful that he is always mortifying her before strangers.

True, I was clothed myself, but instead of twenty-five, I had two hundred coolies in the same condition as that bashful officer's army.

He smiled sanctimoniously, and the smile and attention, which the bashful Veronica noticed, made her blush and cast her eyes modestly down.

She is just as bashful as the young swain whom she wishes to fascinate, but she has to take the initiative in love affairs.

At first thought this seemed to him to be a sort of bashful jest; but not finding her here, a mysterious foreboding seized him.

"You will not find us at all bashful," answered Frank, and he began helping himself most bountifully to every thing on the table.

He dropped the sinister, assumed the bashful and told us that he was an illusionist and juggler before he took to restaurant-keeping and sleuthing.

"She was such a bashful little person at the Mardi Gras dance she promised Artie Peyton her first cotillion the following season."

It was only a glance she gave her bashful wooer, but it spoke as plainly as his own had spoken a few moments before.

The bashful midshipman recounted what had happened, and how he had overcome the many difficulties which had, one after another, faced him.

The valor of the King was specially extolled; he was no longer a bashful, feeble prince, victimized by feminine cabals, tyrannized over by Richelieu.

Then followed the groaning supper table, surrounded by giggling girls, bashful young men and gossipy old matrons who monopolized the conversation.

His manners were elegant: but he appeared to be very bashful, or diffident; and, at all events, appeared very much disinclined to enter into conversation.

Jet was by no means bashful; in a few seconds he was dancing as spiritedly as if such discomforts as hunger and fatigue were unknown.

He stood on little ceremony, especially at his own house, and, at his friends', never allowed anything to incommode him from a bashful reserve.