The phrase "feign modesty" is correct and can be used in written English.
It means to pretend to be humble or to downplay one's abilities or achievements. Example: Despite her obvious talents, she would often feign modesty to avoid appearing arrogant.
People who feign modesty are wankers.
Leslie Wayne (NYT) THE DEMOCRATS A WILLING RUNNING MATE Most Democrats or Republicans feign modesty and decline to comment substantively if they win speculative mention as a possible vice-presidential choice.
The women, all members of the Washington Mystics, one of the leading teams in the W.N.B.A., hadn't come to eat fried chicken fingers or to watch Mr. Bryant feign modesty.
"It's a great piece of theater that functions somewhere between a play, a musical and an opera," says Ms. Tesori, far too beguiled by the show to feign modesty about its intent and content: she says it mystified her the first time she read it, and only became clear once she actually met Mr. Kushner through the director Joe Mantello and the playwright Craig Lucas four years ago.
Friedman, aka The Dogist, has no reason to feign modesty.
I'm not feigning modesty.
Not for her, feigned modesty then (of any sort), but when you've clocked up five Grammy wins and sold more than 42m records worldwide, screw modesty.
But the best host in "The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down" is none other than the author himself, and though he feigns modesty (the way he no doubt does at his parties), he intends for you to take notice.
Additional abuse is piled on him by his five roommates, who kid him by saying that his good grades are really undeserved gifts from a hero-worshipping faculty, and who insistently ask him to tell them how many points he scored in various bygone games, implying that he knows exactly but is feigning modesty when he claims he doesn't.
I will not turn my back on a smaller population who faces enormous demoralization and abuse at the hands of an arrogant majority, all for the sake of feigned modesty and heterosexual lust.
To manage TARP, "the fact that I had went to Wharton and got my MBA and worked at Goldman are all fine, but I really relied on my engineering skills as a research engineer working on NASA missions," Kashkari told The Wall Street Journal, employing the rarely used "people criticize me for being a banker, but really I'm a rocket scientist" tactic of feigning modesty.
