Crossword clues for modesty
modesty
- Unassuming quality
- Humble quality
- Trait of a good sportsman
- Unwillingness to boast
- Unassuming nature
- Trait lacking in egotists
- Sartre's "virtue of the lukewarm"
- Reason for a cover-up?
- Quality feigned by a humblebrag
- Moved down the runway, say
- It might go with a miniskirt
- Freedom from self-centeredness
- Demureness or bashfulness
- Asset of one who's retiring
- "The only sure bait when you angle for praise": Lord Chesterfield
- "Aw, shucks" quality
- "Aw shucks" quality
- Victorian virtue
- What blowhards lack
- Unwillingness to crow
- Freedom from vanity or conceit
- Formality and propriety of manner
- Decorum
- Flower-of-an-hour
- Humility
- My penning lyric poems with little time for humility
- Way animal enclosure shows lack of pretentiousness
- Self-deprecating quality
- Humility; decency
- Reserve of dye most supply
- Blaise, perhaps, having way with pen
- Dome-shaped enclosure for animal reserve
- Decorum in fashions? Totally gutted
- Decency of every other character in smutty song's lines
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Modesty \Mod"es*ty\, n. [L. modestia: cf. F. modestie. See Modest.]
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.
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Natural delicacy or shame regarding personal charms and the sexual relation; purity of thought and manners; due regard for propriety in speech or action.
Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.
--Shak.Modesty piece, a narrow piece of lace worn by women over the bosom. [Obs.]
--Addison.Syn: Bashfulness; humility; diffidence; shyness. See Bashfulness, and Humility.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1530s, "freedom from exaggeration, self-control," from Middle French modestie or directly from Latin modestia "moderation, sense of honor, correctness of conduct," from modestus "moderate, keeping measure, sober, gentle, temperate," from modus "measure, manner" (see mode (n.1)). Meaning "quality of having a moderate opinion of oneself" is from 1550s; that of "womanly propriety" is from 1560s.\n\nLa pudeur donne des plaisirs bien flatteurs à l'amant: elle lui fait sentir quelles lois l'on transgresse pour lui;\n(Modesty both pleases and flatters a lover, for it lays stress on the laws which are being transgressed for his sake.)
[Stendhal "de l'Amour," 1822]
Wiktionary
n. 1 The quality of being modest; having a limited and not overly high opinion of oneself and one's abilities. 2 moderate behaviour; reserve. 3 (lb en specifically) pudency, prudish avoidance of sexual explicitness.
WordNet
Wikipedia
Modesty and demureness is a mode of dress and deportment intended to avoid encouraging sexual attraction in others; actual standards vary widely. In this use, it can be considered inappropriate or immodest to reveal certain parts of the body. A modest person would behave so as to avoid encouraging the sexual attention of others. In some societies, modesty may involve women covering their bodies completely and not talking to men who are not immediate family members; in others, a fairly revealing but one-piece bathing costume is considered modest when other women wear bikinis. In some countries, exposure of the body in breach of community standards of modesty is also considered to be public indecency, and public nudity is generally illegal in most of the world and regarded as indecent exposure. However, nudity is at times tolerated in some societies; for example, during a world naked bike ride, while a lone man attempting to walk naked from south to north Britain was repeatedly imprisoned.
Small children are widely not expected to be fully clothed in public until they are grown up.
Young Muslim schoolgirls are often considered by their parents to be exempt from modesty requirements that they would consider to be applicable to adult women, such as hair-covering in public and not wearing short skirts or dresses. However, in recent years there has been a trend away from this, with even young Muslim girls being expected by their parents to wear a hijab, or to wear clothes under their skirts to avoid exposing their bare legs or underwear in public.
In semi-public contexts standards of modesty vary. Nudity may be acceptable in public single-sex changing rooms at swimming baths, for example, or for mass medical examination of men for military service. In private, standards again depend upon the circumstances. A person who would never disrobe in the presence of a physician of the opposite sex in a social context might unquestioningly do so for a medical examination; others might allow examination, but only by a person of the same sex.
Usage examples of "modesty".
Her slender figure, her prominent hips, her beautifully-modelled bosom, her large eyes, from which flashed the sparkle of amorous desire, everything about her was strikingly beautiful, and presented to my hungry looks the perfection of the mother of love, adorned by all the charms which modesty throws over the attractions of a lovely woman.
If a feeling of modesty does not deter you from shewing yourself tender, loving, and full of amorous ardour with me in his presence, how could I be ashamed, when, on the contrary, I ought to feel proud of myself?
I replied, with a kind of boastful modesty, that it was a peculiar mark of the favour of the Holy Father, the Pope, who had freely made me a knight of the Order of St.
They lauded me for having with proper modesty refrained from quoting the holy fathers of the Church, whom at my age I could not be supposed to have sufficiently studied, and the ladies particularly admired me because there was no Latin in it but the Text from Horace, who, although a great libertine himself, has written very good things.
I felt sure that she could not refuse me some marks of real or of pretended affection, unless she wished to make a show of a modesty which certainly did not belong to her, and, knowing that her modesty would only be all pretence, I was determined not to be a mere toy in her hands.
She could not attribute my reserve to a feeling of modesty, and not knowing why I did not shew more boldness she must have supposed that I was either ill or impotent.
Not knowing what to say to her, for I could speak to her of nothing but love--and it was a delicate subject--I kept looking at her charming face, not daring to let my eyes rest upon two budding globes shaped by the Graces, for fear of giving the alarm to her modesty.
I bitterly repented of having outraged her modesty, for I now esteemed and respected her, but yet I could not make up my mind to repair the wrong I had done her.
Modesty was covering that, with the help of the dannert wire that she and Willie had off-loaded from the van and piled in the porch and across the front windows while Wee Jock was striking his first blow.
Caesar in describing his own exploits, in his dedicatory letter to the Duchess of Richmond, must be taken as an excess of modesty.
Before they touched the shores of Africa, this holy kindred degenerated into sensual love: and as Antonina soon overleaped the bounds of modesty and caution, the Roman general was alone ignorant of his own dishonor.
She was sincere, because she did not know that to conceal some of our impressions is one of the precepts of propriety, and as her intentions were pure, she was a stranger to that false shame and mock modesty which cause pretended innocence to blush at a word, or at a movement said or made very often without any wicked purpose.
Besides, Metastasio was so modest that at first I did not think that modesty natural, but it was not long before I discovered that it was genuine, for when he recited something of his own composition, he was the first to call the attention of his hearers to the important parts or to the fine passages with as much simplicity as he would remark the weak ones.
The false countess received their embraces with much ease and modesty, and attracted the particular attention of the Margrave of Baireuth and the Duchess of Wurtemberg, his daughter, who took possession of her, and did not leave her till the end of the ball.
She did not answer me, but gave me her hand, lowering her eyes with much modesty.