timidity
Americannoun
-
timidities
plural
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of timidity
First recorded in 1510–20; from Latin timiditās, equivalent to timid(us) + -i- connecting vowel + -tās noun suffix; see timid ( def. ), -i- ( def. ), -ty 2 ( def. )
Explanation
Do you suffer from timidity? If so, you probably feel uneasy in new places and situations. You might fear having to make decisions. But as you get more comfortable, your timidity will go away. The noun timidity is related to the Latin word timidus, from timere, meaning “to fear.” In fact, fear is often a cause of timidity — fear of the unknown, fear of not knowing what to do. For example, you might experience timidity in visiting a country for the first time because you aren't sure of the local customs or you don't speak the language well. Because you are afraid of embarrassing yourself, you hold back.
Vocabulary lists containing timidity
The Devil's Arithmetic
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Litotes from Top AP English Exam Novels
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"Growing Up Asian in America"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Choices, of course, have to be made, and timidity won’t get the job done.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026
More timidity to observe, more vulnerability in defence, more powder-puff stuff up front, more wide men running in ever decreasing circles.
From BBC ● Oct. 23, 2025
But this is not the time for judicial timidity.
From Slate ● Feb. 13, 2025
Fear, panic and timidity rule the day, as they generally do.
From New York Times ● May 16, 2024
At first Betsie and I called these meetings with great timidity.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
What Are We to Do?, a study of the "rise and fall" of the British labor movement, is an urbane, inquisitional chronicle of missed opportunities, compromises, retreats, timidities, defeats.
From Time Magazine Archive
It is a standing challenge, a rebuke, to the rigidities and timidities of the newly dominant right and left.
From Time Magazine Archive
Only a combination of great disasters, great stupidities, great timidities could ever allow war to come so close to U.S. shores.
From Time Magazine Archive
But it takes a typically Victorian literary license to account for the difference between the groping timidities of Albert Grope and the caustic, scrupulous and sometimes slightly patronizing style of his more mature meditations.
From Time Magazine Archive
He had always taken blindness as a synonym for helplessness, a matter of uncertain groping, of timidities, of despair.
From The Hidden Places by Bertrand W. Sinclair
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
