diffidence
1.diffidence about self promotion.
2.He failed through diffidence.
3.a feeling of diffidence about doing something.
4.We set his silence down to his diffidence.
5.It was with diffidence and hesitation that I approached this work
6.The scientists of the early twentieth century were in no mood for such scrupulous diffidence.
7.Yet we have noticed a phenomenon: While foreigners seem to be getting on well here, no matter how successful they are, as experts, academics, businessmen, engineers, teachers, artistes or athletes, many will, time and again, reveal a sense of helplessness and diffidence that cannot be concealed.
8.I continued this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that might possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that gave the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather said, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should not think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken.
