diffidently

She sings about love, almost diffidently, amid sustained swells of brasses and strings. an electronic drumbeat and some echoing trumpet calls raise tensions, only to dissolve them in the undulating warmth of Carm’s orchestrations.

Yes, we were responding to anonymous prompts, but we were looking, respectfully and diffidently, at a fellow human being.

He falls passionately, and yet at the same slightly diffidently, for a married woman – as Fiennes was endlessly to do in the movies afterwards.

Connery answers diffidently: “A little. It’s throwing the gyroscopic controls of a guided missile off balance with a … a radio beam or something, isn’t it?”

Manchester entered on its Victory in Europe rejoicings a little diffidently and the day was physically suited to the mood.