These words refer to an absence of assertiveness, a lack of vanity or presumption, or to something moderate or small in scale. Modest is the only one of these words that works equally well in any of these three areas of meaning: too modest for the aggressiveness demanded of him; touchingly modest about her tremendous success; a modest bank account.

Meek , retiring and shy function only in the sense of unwillingness to call attention to oneself. Whereas modest here suggests an inbred wish to avoid indecorousness or boastfulness, shy suggests bashfulness based not on decorum but on timidity or a lack of social experience, or both. Retiring intensifies this sense of shy , suggesting the habit of avoiding any sort of scrutiny altogether, though not necessarily out of fear. A shy person, for example, may go to parties but be afraid of taking part in them: a retiring person would avoid them completely for unstated reasons of his own. Meek suggests a tractable mildness or submissiveness, but not necessarily an avoidance of confrontation as in these other words: One girl was too shy to speak, but the others supplied us with meek answers to all our questions.

Unassuming and unpretentious are close synonyms of modest when it suggests a lack of vanity. Modest here refers to an understated acceptance of good fortune or recognition, or to behaviour that at least simulates such an acceptance. Unassuming emphasizes one aspect of this, suggesting that one does not wish or demand that other people treat one in any special way. Unpretentious suggests having no illusions about one’s relative importance or refusing to inflate one’s worth out of proportion to the facts.

• He was modest about winning the prize, unassuming in giving credit to those who had helped him, and unpretentious about the new importance it gave him.

Humble and lowly relate to the meaning of modest that refers to something on a reduced scale. Whereas modest emphasizes moderate, humble and lowly distinctly suggest small.

• Humble expectations are best; even modest ones are all too often disappointed.

Lowly , of course, suggests an even smaller scale than humble and is mostly used now only in jocose clichés.

• Let us consider the lowly housewife.

Unlike lowly , humble can also suggest a lack of vanity: the great man who is also humble . But in either sense it has more and more acquired a patronizing tone when used of other people and an air of sanctimonious piety when used of oneself: the humble poor; the humble citizens like ourselves. In the last example, calling attention so blatantly to one’s supposed lack of vanity is not unassuming , modest or unpretentious .