To that end, she puts words to Ellington's "Melancholia" — not the move of a meek or diffident artist.
But ordinary modest, decent, diffident people change – and not for the better.
His position is the more extraordinary because this outwardly modest and diffident man from Kentucky comes from what he calls a subsistence farm himself.
He is a star cricket player, his school's "head boy," bound for Oxford; newly in love with a beautiful and brilliant girl, he is a powerful focus of envy among his fellows, although he is far too modest and diffident to realize it.
Although Wegner could be modest and diffident about his work, he was a gregarious man, and his domed head and neatly bearded and bespectacled face, with a bow tie for formal occasions, were often seen at the Art Workers Guildd (to which he was introduced by Mansell in 1952), at the Chelsea Arts Club and at the dinners of the Double Crown Club.
Consequently, all too often I got an overhyped menu, lackadaisical kitchen performance and arrogant or diffident servers who didn't know Napa cabbage from Napa Valley.
Those songwriters were backed by neatly understated studio bands that could play upbeat folk-rock or diffident ballads — with a flute, perhaps, along with a drummer with a light touch and some unobtrusive female singers.
We are not assertive, or too assertive; shy or diffident; insular and isolated; and so on.
Often, he said, their materials have been modest or unconventional.
