Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Coyness   Listen
noun
Coyness  n.  The quality of being coy; feigned or bashful unwillingness to become familiar; reserve. "When the kind nymph would coyness feign, And hides but to be found again."
Synonyms: Reserve; shrinking; shyness; backwardness; modesty; bashfulness.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Coyness" Quotes from Famous Books



... hard to find excuses for her. He strove to convince himself that this strange coldness, this evasion, this half-repellent attitude, was but a form of maiden coyness. It was her natural fear of so great a change. It was the result, perhaps, of some last lingering look back to the scene of her artistic triumphs. It did not even occur to him as a possibility that this woman with her unstable sympathies and her fatally facile imagination, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... produce The gentler apple's winy juice; The golden fruit that worthy is Of Galatea's purple kiss; He does the savage hawthorn teach To bear the medlar and the pear. He bids the rustic plum to rear A noble trunk, and be a peach. Even Daphne's coyness he does mock, And weds the cherry to her stock, Though she refused Apollo's suit, Even she, that chaste and virgin tree, Now wonders at herself, to see That she's a mother made, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... borne by dappled steeds, The sacred gate of orient pearl and gold, Smitten with Lucifer's light silver wand, Expanded slow to strains of harmony: The waves beneath in purpling rows, like doves Glancing with wanton coyness tow'rd their queen, Heaved softly; thus the damsel's bosom heaves When from her sleeping lover's downy cheek, To which so warily her own she brings Each moment nearer, she perceives the warmth Of coming kisses fanned by playful dreams. Ocean and earth and heaven was jubilee. For ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... there is something charming in a girl simply because she is a girl. It is in the ring of her laugh, in her irony, in her frankness or her coyness, in the way she does the commonest things,— puts on her scarf, or catches hold of your arm,—things that only too soon disappear in conventionalities, ceremonies, and proprieties. But there is no need of this change as concerns much that is now called only girlish. ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... child incur neither punishment nor reproof? Verily, thou hast committed thyself to a quibble for the sake of contention, and it is thy duty to bow before a proposal of fruition, so henceforward cease from denial and coyness, for the commandment of Allah is a decree foreordained:[FN337] indeed, I have more reason than thou to fear falling and by sin to be misled; and well inspired was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton


More quotes...



Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com