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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:

The refined and bashful girl became brusque, supercilious, equivocal.

A most attractive creature stood before him, at once smiling and bashful, in an attitude of provocation and fear, with hands clasped, then with arms again outstretched, beautiful, white, fragrant arms that showed below the short sleeves of her fine cambric blouse.

He has long been wont to feel bashful about his former religion; as if it were an old attachment having consequences which he did not abandon but kept in decent privacy, his avowed objects and actual position being incompatible with their public acknowledgment.

The "crying of the forfeits" and paying of the penalties creates much merriment, particularly when a bashful youth is sentenced to "kiss through the fire-tongs" some beautiful romp of a girl, who delights playing him tricks while the room rings with laughter.

So, disguising my bashful confusion, I said, "I am awfully sorry that I took you, my dear old chap, for a common ordinary fellow; but remember the proverb, that 'appearances are deceitful,' and do not reveal a thin skin about a rather natural mistake."

As the pipe passed round among the men, a lively conversation went forward, more merry than delicate, and at length two or three of the elder women (for the girls were somewhat diffident and bashful) began to assail Raymond with various pungent witticisms.

For an artist who is rather bashful and proud, a lecture, which is a monologue shouted in the presence of a few hundred unknown, silent people, a ready-made garment warranted to fit all sizes, though it actually fits no one, is a thing intolerably false.

I distinctly recollect the first time of our meeting, which was at the aforesaid mess-table; and that his appearance struck me as that of a bashful and awkward person dull and taciturn, with a formal precise way of speaking, and a slight abruptness of manner.

Richard was below the medium size, with very light hair, of slim figure, reticent of speech, shy and bashful, especially so in the presence of Grace, whom he met at parties, donations, and college receptions, so frequent and amusing in their lively village.

How irrational they are is best proved by the fact that shyness is caused mostly by the presence of strangers; there are many young people who are bashful, awkward, and tongue-tied in the presence of strangers, whose tremors wholly disappear in the family circle.

Every man is better acquainted with himself than anybody else, but when he relies upon the knowledge of others as superior to his own knowledge, he loses the respect of his fellows, and finally loses his own respect and becomes bashful in their presence.

Men who marry from interested motives are inexcusable; but the very modesty of women makes against their happiness in this point, by giving them a kind of bashful fear of objecting to such persons as their parents recommend as proper objects of their tenderness.

Although anxious to know the cause, he was too bashful to ask the reason, and as she retreated almost immediately, he, after waiting a few minutes in hopes the gentleman would re-appear, was compelled to retrace the way which led to his cheerless home.

Jesse, arrayed in coquettish female apparel, with his smooth face, blue eyes, and blooming cheeks, looked the image of a bashful country girl, not yet acquainted with vice, though half eager and half reluctant to walk a step nearer to the edge of its perilous precipice.

His adolescent soul was not closed to any of the thousand bashful emotions by which a young man is a being apart, whose heart abounds in joys, in poetry, in virginal hopes, puerile in the eyes of men of the world, but deep because they are single-hearted.

None had been seen here before, and it caused no little excitement and alarm, for the European settlers imagined that these poor, timid, bashful bears were as dangerous as man-eating lions and tigers, and that they would pursue any human being that came in their way.

Anything more natural and frank I never saw, and found this brave John as bashful as brave, yet full of excellencies and fine aspirations, which, having no power to express themselves in words, seemed to have bloomed into his character and made him what he was.

Lionel, on the contrary, declaring nothing so manly, nor so becoming, as a neglect of outward appearance, pulled him to the coach door, notwithstanding all his efforts to disengage himself, and the most bashful distortions with which he strove to sneak behind his conductor.

Occasionally primroses may be seen, though they are not common in these parts; but on the banks of the lower lane modest violets peep out shyly from the shadows, and the dull purple flowers of a species of nettle offer their bashful welcome to spring.

Anita, dusky and buxom daughter of Chico Miguel, "the little hombre with the little herd," as the cattle-men described him, nodded a bashful acknowledgment of the salute, and spoke sharply to the dog which had risen and was bristling toward the Strange wayfarer.

A bashful Russian, who wore remarkably fine broadcloth and had perfect manners, was likewise received into the good graces of the ladies, who taught him English, called him 'the Baron' in private, and covered him with confusion in public by making him talk at table.

Sometimes one would be called into the corner of the yard to undergo a closer scrutiny, and it was amusing to see how coy and bashful the hardened offenders looked while this ceremony was taking place; acquaintances were claimed that were by no means cordially reciprocated.

It was a large canvas with three principal figures: a young man, a "swell" of modern days, turning away from the bold and eager glances of a somewhat brazen coquette, and suddenly struck by the modest bashful beauty of a girl of the governess-order seated at a piano.

Alice, being quite as bashful as myself, kept our conversation to the high plane of Hawthorne and Poe and Schiller with an occasional tired droop to the weather, hence I infer that she was as much relieved as I when we reached her boarding house some two hours later.

A good-natured man cannot see an overbearing fellow put a bashful man of merit out of countenance, or outstrip him in the pursuit of any advantage; but he is on fire to succor the oppressed, to produce the merit of the one, and confront the impudence of the other.

He seemed to be very bashful, and half ashamed of what he was doing; and when he had done speaking he declared himself conscious that he was intruding, and expressed a hope that I would not hesitate to say so if his suggestion were from any cause disagreeable to me.

She moved nearer in instinctive obedience to him, bashful, tearful, trembling, confused, but radiant and lovely as I had never seen her, and lifting her timid eyes to his, as it seemed for further instructions, with a gentle deprecating grace, while she carefully averted them from me.

Although I had noticed that the puppy made a point of lying down before that heap, I did not realize that he, terrified and bashful as he then was, had constituted himself its custodian, till this action of hers left his soul "full of discord and dismay."

He took up his pen, and Elsie collected her thoughts once more, worked busily and silently for another half hour, and then brought her sheet to him for inspection; presenting it with a timid, bashful air, "I am afraid it is very full of mistakes, papa," she said.

As Norma only did what pleased her, most of the drudgery of entertaining fell upon Blanche, whose grievous portion it was to attend to the comfort of dowagers; to find partners for luckless damsels unable to find them for themselves, and to encourage and bring out bashful youths.

That I was so bashful and at the same time a bully and would-be leader sounds inconsistent, but at the time of my father's death, there was probably not a boy in the village who could be made to shrink up, as it were, from social timidity, as I could.

After a few other figures, perhaps less striking, we come to the merchant, who receives the advances of his partner with a thoughtful air; while immediately after him another death is trying to make himself more acceptable to the bashful nun by throwing a cloak over his nakedness.

And so it happened that when a half hour passed, and the bright-eyed bevy missed Flo and couldn't find her, wisely giving up the search at last, that she, the quietest and most bashful of the lot, was being initiated into the mysteries of "what life is."

It was not easy for Hunter to steer his bashful friend through all the shoals and quicksands of such flattery; but, on the plea of his broken health and strength, he hurried him early to his bed, and returned to the fireside, where his aunt awaited him.

If he had asked her to deliver a Latin oration, it would not have seemed a more impossible task to bashful Beth; but there was no place to run to, no Jo to hide behind now, and the poor boy looked so wistfully at her, that she bravely resolved to try.

Throughout, the impression is conveyed of a shy recluse, alternately bashful in disposition and bold in thought, gifted with original and various capacities, but capacities which seemed to have developed themselves in the shade, without sufficient energy of will or desire to force them, except fitfully, into the sunlight.

We all remembered the modest, almost bashful, demeanor of the fallen general among his friends, and his glorious heroism in the presence of his enemies, and many tears moistened the brown cheeks of rough soldiers as they thought of the loss of one of our best beloved leaders.

When questioned as to his attainments, the lad replies without any of that pertness and forwardness which too often characterize Western youth, but, as he has been taught to do, in a bashful and modest manner, and in a way to win at once the good opinion of the stranger.

When his cigarette was finished, as repayment he commenced singing in a shrill falsetto a singing girl's song which made him the hero of the hour as he pretended to be a small-footed woman who was bashful and who tottered in shame at the mere presence of so many men.

If an officer is senior, and is still somewhat on the bashful side, by watching the manner of his own seniors when he gets counsel, and thawing toward his immediate juniors, thereby increasing his receptiveness toward them, there will occur a chain reaction to the bottom level.

I thought it was best to be a little awkward and bashful, so I said very little while the lawyers fussed about with title deeds, and at last the eventful moment came when one does that conjuring trick in which the gentlemen of the law take such infantile delight.

Trollope, a mild, gentlemanly, retiring young man, with a bashful manner and a weak voice, found himself utterly unable to cope with the lout, who mocked at him before his face and mimicked him behind his back, and refused to be taught or guided by him in any way.

Until twenty years of age, a young man may, indeed, be rather bashful about showing his poetry and his prose; but, for all that, he is pretty apt to think that these very productions would place him at the tiptop of literature, if once they could be known.

And perhaps in time to come others will know how to esteem what is not every day put into their hands, when they have marked events, and better weighed how hurtful and unwise it is to hide a secret and pernicious rupture under the ill counsel of a bashful silence.

It's too bad to miss a chance because we cannot interpret the metaphor in which some bashful swain thinks it decorous to couch his proposals; and I once knew a young lady who, happening to dislike needlework, and replying in the negative to the insidious question, "Can you sew a button?"

While the Cardinal Grosbeak enlivens the neighborhood of our southern cities and villages, and frequents the lawn of the planter's habitation, the present species, shy and bashful, retires to the borders of the almost stagnant waters used as reservoirs for the purpose of irrigating the rice plantations.

It was prettily done, and I valued the small courtesy all the more, because it evidently cost the bashful creature an effort to stand up alone in a car full of strangers; especially as she could not reach the strap to steady herself, and found it difficult to stand comfortably.

A person may have the education of a College President, and possess the wealth of an Astor, yet let him with soiled or slouchy clothes be suddenly brought into the society of ladies and gentlemen, and he will feel and act constrained and bashful in spite of his best endeavors.

"I can," said the bashful young man to the director of the film company, "swim, dive, run an auto, fly an airplane, fence, box, shoot, ride a horse, run a motor-boat, play golf, fight, make love, fall off cliffs, rescue heroines, play football, die naturally, and kiss a girl."

I suppose there is no doubt, but I was born with bashful tendencies, and "What is bred in the bone, stays long in the flesh," to use the words of some wise individual, who, like many another great genius, shunned notoriety, and had for his nom de plume, Anonymous.

At our feet, and betwixt us and the sister to the hill on which we now were seated, was a smooth and undeceiving mirror, set, with bashful caution, between these obscuring hills, that nature's pardonable vanity might not with ease be gazed upon by the ignorant eye of man.

This beautiful shame, this touching timidity, the expression of wounded modesty in her bashful eyes, excited a new feeling in the bosom of the Hebrew slave, who no longer regarded the sister of Lucius as a heathen priestess, but as a woman the loveliest and purest of her sex.

He was very bashful and diffident, scarcely dare recite before his class at school, but he determined to become an orator, he accordingly began the plan of committing speeches and then reciting them in the corn-fields; at other times they were delivered in the barn, before the cows and horse.

When the heart is truly engaged, a man at these moments can only be bashful, especially when he sees it will be an uphill fight; but if the heart has nothing to do with the matter, he can be as cool and suave as though he were merely telling an everyday story.

It is no trifling matter, I assure my dear friend, when one's betrothal is only of a few hours standing; particularly as this cruel lady love of mine tormented me so relentlessly with her wicked tricks, and her apparent indifference struck me dumb, and made me feel as timorous as a bashful youth.

If I stop to speak with this little maid who scarcely reaches to the top-boots of yonder cavalry officer, there is less of bashful self-consciousness in her sweet little face than of grave wonder at the foreign accent and strange ways of this new figure obtruded upon her limited horizon.

Zebedee made a wonderful toast master, encouraging the bashful members of the party with so much tact and kindliness that even the timid Annie actually got upon her feet and made a very graceful little speech before she seemed to be aware of the fact that she was really doing it.

There I sat, in all the bashful diffidence of a simple and inexperienced recluse, trembling for myself, fearing for others, systematically suppressing my feelings, impulsively betraying them; while, with an expression of sweet wildness, and retiring consciousness, was observable a degree of susceptibility too exquisite to admit of lasting peace.

Her look was downcast, her voice subdued; she was now not less timid than the feeblest damsel of the village in that doubtful period of life when, passing from childhood to girlhood, the virgin falters, as it were, with bashful thoughts, upon the threshold of a new and perilous condition.

American young women do not know that an Englishman is the most bashful creature on the face of the earth, and that he would rather face an audience of two thousand men from the streets than address twenty young women, every one as sharp as a needle and as pretty as a flower.

There was a large party of people, young and old, assembled in the barn in which the husking was done, and the Southerners, who were not at all bashful or afraid of pretty girls, had any amount of fun over the red ears of which there seemed to be an abundant supply.

Her artlessness, her vivacity, her eager curiosity, and the bashful blushes which spread over her face whenever her innocent or jesting remarks caused me to laugh, everything, in fact, convinced me that she was an angel destined to become the victim of the first libertine who would undertake to seduce her.

Nature had closely curled the locks of dark-brown hair, which relieved and set off the features, such as we have described them, displaying a bold and animated disposition, much more than might have been expected from his situation, or from his previous manners, which hitherto had seemed bashful, homely, and awkward.

Another development which sounds promising for bashful suitors and other timid souls, enables a person to store within himself electrically a message he desires to deliver and then to deliver it without speaking, simply by putting a finger to the ear of the person for whom the message is intended.

Then came, naturally enough, a wish, mingled with many fears, to appear before the public; for, timid as Frances was, and bashful, and altogether unaccustomed to hear her own praises, it is clear that she wanted neither a strong passion for distinction, nor a just confidence in her own powers.

The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the eastern recitation-room the next morning, when Miss Kate, whose seat was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart, affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of Carry her neighbor.

Sutherland turned from hugging her rescued darling to throw her arms around Donald's neck and kiss him again and again, greatly to the bashful boy's embarrassment, while her husband was thumping him on the back, and exclaiming huskily, "How can I ever repay you for saving my child's life?"

The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart, affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of Carry, her neighbor.

He was so awkward and bashful among women, that we concluded him secure from matrimony; and the noisy fondness with which he used to welcome me to his house, made us imagine that he would look out for no other heir, and that we had nothing to do but wait patiently for his death.

He was not bashful nor void of vanity, and had now flattered himself that he should figure like Sir Robert Walpole by attempting to re-establish the defeated Excise Scheme; not reflecting that the opposition to that project was levelled at the Minister, not occasioned by the pretended inconveniences and dangers of it.

He was delighted to have her in the school, and her quick mind was an amazement to him; but she was so homesick that often it was impossible for her to study or to recite, while being with one hundred and fifty girls of her own age made her more bashful than ever.

A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got every word by heart (even including, however he managed it, the most seemingly casual improvisations of the moment), he really spoke like a book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in England.

Cecilia had not supposed the quiet, bashful lover, whom she had often treated with great disdain, capable of such a wooing, and as he now went on, more tenderly, more urgently, the 'yes' pleaded for came at last from her lips, rather hesitatingly, it is true, but without any sign of repugnance.

He saluted all the company with a benignity which had a touch of the majestic, and also of the rustic in it; for at heart the Doctor was a bashful man, that is, he had somewhere in his mental camp that treacherous fellow whom John Bunyan anathematizes under the name of Shame.

And when he did see her, and met the eyes he had not looked into since that night a year before when she listened to his vows with such a sweet and bashful timidity, he hardly felt the shock of the change observable in her, for the greater shock her sister's appearance inspired.

It was not often that Dolph showed such excitement, but he had good cause, and, when he saw Chad standing, shamefaced and bashful, in the middle of the floor, and Melissa joyously pointing her finger at him, he caught up the banjo from the bed and put it into the boy's hands.

Some of them even took a sort of liking to her, and gave her an uncouth greeting as they went by; and, more than once, one or another of them had paused to ask for a flower or two, and had received them with a curious bashful awe, when they had been passed over the holly hedge.

The pamphlet made some stir at the time, and poor Claribel, my bashful and retiring friend, found herself made the lion of the season, and pestered past all endurance by anxious inquiries and impertinent visits from strangers, who came from far, hoping to have their curiosity gratified by a re-appearance of the specter.

Susan would find herself, the inevitable glass in hand, talking hard to some little silk-clad old lady in some softly lighted lovely drawing-room, to be whisked away to some other drawing-room, and to another fireside, where perhaps there was a stocky, bashful girl of fourteen to amuse, or somebody's grandfather to interest and smile upon.

It was upon a Monday morning, in the month of June, that the school-room door opened a foot and a half wider than usual, and a huge, colossal figure stalked in, with a kind of bashful laugh upon his countenance, as if conscious of the disproportion betwixt his immense size and that of the other schoolboys.

The nurse replied, "My dear mistress, he is the most beautiful youth of the age, and the women of the whole city are distracted with his charms; yet he is so bashful as to answer no advances, and shrinks from notice like a school-boy, but I will endeavor to overcome his shyness, and procure you a meeting."

The natural result of this attitude and feeling is an estrangement from those of another faith, a bashful reluctance to meet them and to co-operate with them in social or civic matters, an unconscious tendency to see motives that do not exist and, at times, to refrain from the most elementary acts of charity and courtesy.

This man, I must explain, had wanted for many years to have our bashful little hero sit to him, even to the very pit of his stomach, in order to represent, whether in a crayon likeness or a medallion I know not, his face, and the broad, high, Plato-like breast shining out from his shirt-frills.

To those who are acquainted with the tactics of the tender passion, it is, moreover, known that a bashful lover seldom cares for seeking the society of his fair one in the presence of her parents, while the fair one herself as seldom cares for being seen in the society of a lover by these relations.

In his adventurous career, young Thorwald had but seldom encountered the finer things of life, and his nature, while wholesome, was sturdy and virile, not likely to be stirred by sentiment; so that now, among the good-natured, friendly boys of old Bannister, he, accustomed to rude surroundings and rough acquaintances, was bashful.

The noble old matron had long been a subject of almost timid veneration to the maiden, and she obeyed the summons with more bashful awe than she had ever felt before; and with much fear lest the two elders might have been combining to make an appeal to her to give up her betrothal, for James's sake.

Such as out of rusticity, and want of education are unreasonably subject to, and at every turn overcome by this passion, we call bashful; and those who out of disrespect to others, and a false opinion of their own sufficiency, have learned not to be affected with it, when they should be, are called impudent or shameless.

Their strange exotic mixture of oriental graces, blending happily with efforts to imitate the refinements of our civilization, their artless tokens of ignorance, their coquettish and feline instincts, their voluptuous bearing in process of attempted transformation into bashful reserve, all these phenomena afforded me the most delightful subject for study ever entered on by a philosopher.

The gaucherie of his manner became at once apparent now: yet he seemed in no way bashful or ill as ease, only very stiff and awkward in his movements, as he drew a chair for her at a convenient angle, and when she had sat down, placed a cushion to her back and a footstool at her feet.

After all, it was not much to excite them so: for they were all excited, except placid Charley; a country lass, bashful, yet with a pretty vanity, smiling and walking past a group of young men who admired her, but whom, except the one whom she did not perceive, she did not know.

At a quadrille party, the bashful young gentleman always remains as near the entrance of the room as possible, from which position he smiles at the people he knows as they come in, and sometimes steps forward to shake hands with more intimate friends: a process which on each repetition seems to turn him a deeper scarlet than before.

I did all I could for them, but, having Daniel in tow, dared not sail too near the edge of the Doldrums, lest he should drop into sympathetic stagnation and be taken preternaturally bashful with his sails all aback, just as I wanted to carry him gallantly into action with some clipper-built cruiser of a nice young lady.

Gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overrun the surrounding trees, reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent millpond, while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.

Every one in camp who sees the girl carrying the food in a covered dish to the young man's lodge, knows that a marriage is to take place; and the girl is watched by idle persons as she passes to and fro, so that the task is quite a trying one for people as shy and bashful as Indians are.

Among the ladies there were not a few who, the rest of the year, moved noiselessly about the studies of their husbands and the nursery, and who now saw themselves displayed in unwonted gala-dress under the bright glare of lights, and were as shy and bashful as they had been long ago in their maiden days.

The bashful young baron imagined all sorts of romantic and perilous incidents in which he might constitute himself her knight and protector, and show such brave and tender devotion to her as he had read of in the old books of chivalry; and which might lead up to the avowal he was burning to make, yet dared not.

Though they have such proud looks they are extremely bashful and restive under our gaze, constantly shifting their position to escape our scrutiny; as for making a sketch of one, that is nearly impossible, for immediately he sees you put your pencil to paper he vanishes in the crowd, as though he had detected you levelling a revolver at him.

Somewhat embarrassed by the presence of the female portion of the company, and feeling my cheeks burning with bashful timidity, I formed a primitive basin by joining my hands together, and cooled my blushes in the water it contained; then removing my frock, bent over and washed myself down to my waist in the stream.

Some persons have the network so equally wove over the whole body, face and all, that the greatest heat or cold will hardly make them change their color; and these are seldom seen to blush, tho' ever so bashful, whilst the texture is so fine in some young women, that they redden, or turn pale, on the least occasion.

His sulkiness arose from the fact that in the company of this beautiful girl he felt strangely bashful and out of his element; for once he was possessed by a vivid consciousness of being the very inferior creature that he really was, and it was one of those unsought conclusions which we prefer not to have forced upon us.