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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
timid
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
too
▪ Maybe it is they who are being too timid in their ideas and proposals.
▪ I offer a plan: too timid, too reserved.
▪ Humble clerks who have gone a bust on clothes for marriageable daughters are outraged but too timid to protest.
▪ They failed not because they were too timid but because they overreached.
▪ Even this may be too timid.
▪ When she found it she was too timid to go to the front door so she peeped in the window.
▪ I always said that Halliwell was too timid by half.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ "May I come in?" said a timid little voice.
▪ a timid child
▪ Decker knew that the senior officer was wrong, but was too timid to tell him.
▪ I was always timid about taking action in a crisis, but not Doris.
▪ Ralph's wife was a small, timid woman who hardly ever spoke.
▪ The nation's newspapers are usually timid in criticizing the military.
▪ They think I'm just a timid woman, but I'll show them they're wrong.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Bruck is suitably cautious, but not at all timid.
▪ But soon nervous, timid seals tended to live longer than trusting ones, so gradually seals grew more and more wary.
▪ But then, Shyamalan is not an individual who could ever be described as timid.
▪ Ellie and I talked in the kitchen, whispering, both a bit timid.
▪ I should have been as timid as the girl herself, if she had looked at me!
▪ It was a bit like sitting very quietly in a forest and waiting for a rare and timid wild animal to come out.
▪ Many riders we hear about seem unjustifiably timid about taking themselves and their horses off across the countryside.
▪ On the phone, though, her client sounded timid, afraid, lost.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Timid

Timid \Tim"id\, a. [L. timidus, fr. timere to fear; cf. Skr. tam to become breathless, to become stupefief: cf. F. timide.] Wanting courage to meet danger; easily frightened; timorous; not bold; fearful; shy.

Poor is the triumph o'er the timid hare.
--Thomson.

Syn: Fearful; timorous; afraid; cowardly; pusillanimous; faint-hearted; shrinking; retiring. [1913 Webster] -- Tim"id*ly, adv. -- Tim"id*ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
timid

1540s, from Middle French timide "easily frightened, shy" (16c.) and directly from Latin timidus "fearful, afraid, cowardly," from timere "to fear," of uncertain origin. Related: Timidly; timidness.

Wiktionary
timid

a. Lacking in courage or confidence.

WordNet
timid
  1. adj. showing fear and lack of confidence [ant: bold]

  2. contemptibly timid

  3. lacking self-confidence; "stood in the doorway diffident and abashed"; "problems that call for bold not timid responses"; "a very unsure young man" [syn: diffident, shy, unsure]

  4. lacking conviction or boldness or courage; "faint heart ne'er won fair lady" [syn: faint, fainthearted]

timid

n. people who are fearful and cautious; "whitewater rafting is not for the timid" [syn: cautious] [ant: brave]

Usage examples of "timid".

Bismarck and Cavour seized the opportunity of making extremely useful for Germany and Italy the irrelevant and vacillating idealism and the timid absolutism of the third Napoleon.

If she should raise her own timid, flushed, adoring face to his, the look might change or die away.

I began by showing him that Leticia Nazareno owed us for an amount of taffeta twice the nautical distance to Santa Maria del Altar, that is, one hundred ninety leagues, and he said aha as if to himself, and I ended up by showing him that the total debt with the special discount for your excellency was equal to six times the grand prize in the lottery for ten years, and he said aha again and only then did he look at me directly without his glasses and I could see that his eyes were timid and indulgent, and only then did he tell me with a strange voice of harmony that our reasons were clear and just, to each his own, he said, have them send the bill to the government.

I was not really amorous of her, I had no difficulty in playing the part of the timid lover.

Whoever assails us is either too timid or too canny to do so directly.

I persisted in behaving towards her with a great air of respect, and one day she said that, having seen me in the disguise of a waiter, she would not have thought I was a man of a timid nature.

And with the deep gratitude which she felt towards her benefactress was blended a sort of impassioned respect, which rendered her timid and deferent each time that she saw her arrive, tall and distinguished, ever clad in black, and showing the remnants of her former beauty which sorrow had wrecked already, though she was barely six-and-forty years of age.

After touching on Planck, Einstein, Moseley, Maskelyne, and the discoveries following these pioneers, the show became mainly about how the Sleepers, one by one, two by two, bunch by timid little bunch, occasional wild firedrake or bumptious troll, Awoke, came forth, and found their way into the new Goetic Age.

Soon after Mariuccia came in, looking timid, confused, and as if she were doubtful of the path she was treading.

When they came out they were no longer timid recluses, they were shrieking with laughter, and reeling from side to side.

After some few minutes, the ladies, who were inclined to oppose him, yielded to the tearful advice of their more timid sisters, and one by one they began to unclasp necklaces and belts and hand them over to the dacoit together with bracelets, bangles and rings.

She did so, but in a timid manner, which annoyed me, because it seemed to express that she was a dependent of mine.

That is an advantage only when the man is timid -- which does not describe Alfred!

Underlying all considerations of shorthorns and merinos was the recollection of a timid foreign lad to be suspected for his shy, bewildered air--to be suspected again for his slim white hands--to be doubly suspected and utterly condemned for his graceful bearing, his appealing eyes, that even now Sir Matthew could see with their soft lashes drooping over them as he fronted them in his darkened office in Flinders Lane.

In the corridor of the hotel Joe, one day, met the timid Felix Gussing, the young man who had once had so much trouble in driving a horse.