All 3 Uses of
diffident
in
The Deerslayer
- This was, in fact, addressed to Wah-ta-Wah, though she who spoke uttered her words with an assumed diffidence and humility that prevented her looking at the other.†
Chpt 16 *diffidence = hesitancy and unassertiveness due to a lack of self-confidence
- Still, Deerslayer, it is not easy for one of my sex and years to forget all her lessons of infancy, all her habits, and her natural diffidence, and say openly what her heart feels!†
Chpt 32
- This indomitable diffidence, which still prevented the young man from suspecting the truth, would have completely discouraged the girl, had not her whole soul, as well as her whole heart, been set upon making a desperate effort to rescue herself from a future that she dreaded with a horror as vivid as the distinctness with which she fancied she foresaw it.†
Chpt 32
Definition:
hesitant and unassertive -- often due to a lack of self-confidence