bashful

1. 1.

   self-consciously timid

   “I never laughed, being bashful; lowering my head, I looked at the wall”

   Similartimid
2. 2.

   disposed to avoid notice

   “they considered themselves a tough outfit and weren't bashful about letting anybody know it”

   Synonymsblate

   Similarbackward

   Scotland

Other forms of bashful

comparative

bashfuller·

superlative

bashfullest·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about bashful

What does bashful mean?

bashful means "self-consciously timid". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in bashful?

bashful has 2 syllables: bash-ful. The stress falls on "bash". In IPA it is /ˈbæʃfəl/.

What is another word for bashful?

Close synonyms include blate. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is bashful a common word?

bashful is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.