The phrase "a modestly small" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that is small in size but with a tone of humility or understatement.
Example: "The apartment was a modestly small space, yet it felt cozy and inviting."
Alternatives: "somewhat small" or "fairly small".
While Barclays secured a modestly smaller penalty, the bank still paid record fines.
When George W. Bush proposed a huge, regressive tax cut in 2001, Snowe, sitting at the heart of a decisive block of centrists, used her leverage to support the passage of a modestly smaller and less regressive version.
The enormous success of the 914 had transformed Xerox from a modestly successful small company into a major corporation.
Modestly small and honestly square, each is unique, offering a glossy, tactile image far different from the pixels of cyberspace or the matte finish of Xerox reproductions.
Although there was a trend for modestly smaller lesions in IL-6−/−/LDLR−/− throughout the course of the study of 16 weeks on chow, Western-type, and Paigen diets, these differences never achieved statistical significance.
Mr. Obama is calling for modestly smaller military spending, at 2.4 percent of economic output, compared with the House Republicans' 2.7 percent.
Big Ben and the station clock bear many similarities: same dial, same use of 24-karat gold leaf — but the station clock, while modestly smaller, bears the once-again proud name of the brand.
So, we choose (rho_{k}) for the next iteration to be only modestly smaller than (rho_{k}) to avoid expensive implementations in the next iteration.
B149 plants were also modestly smaller than wild-type and were slightly chlorotic.
However, as Gregory Paul noted in 1988, Allosaurus was probably not a predator of fully grown sauropods, unless it hunted in packs, as it had a modestly sized skull and relatively small teeth, and was greatly outweighed by contemporaneous sauropods.
