as in shy
not comfortable around people
a sheepish scholar who is most comfortable when surrounded by books
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Examples of sheepish in a Sentence
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Bragg himself has seemed almost sheepish about the Trump case, preferring to talk about tackling wage theft or creating a jail-diversion program.
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Michael Rothfeld Emily Woo Zeller Krish Seenivasan David Mason, New York Times, 9 Apr. 2024
Norman Mailer wrote with an unstable mixture of self-indulgence and self-awareness, bravado and diffidence, glibness and bracing honesty, macho posturing and an almost sheepish gentleness.
—Andrew Delbanco, The New York Review of Books, 28 Mar. 2024
But after Moose pressures the more sheepish AJ to empty his bank account for an overpaying bid on the Snack Shack, the only way out of the red is going all-in on the business.
—J. Kim Murphy, Variety, 16 Mar. 2024
She and her family are welcomed by the queen, Isabelle (Robin Wright, gorgeously cloaked in robes, power and snobbery), and her fiancé, Prince Henry (Nick Robinson), who looks oddly sheepish, as if he’d been caught in a lie on his Royal Match profile.
—Tom Gliatto, Peoplemag, 8 Mar. 2024
See all Example Sentences for sheepish 
Michael Rothfeld Emily Woo Zeller Krish Seenivasan David Mason, New York Times, 9 Apr. 2024
Norman Mailer wrote with an unstable mixture of self-indulgence and self-awareness, bravado and diffidence, glibness and bracing honesty, macho posturing and an almost sheepish gentleness.
—Andrew Delbanco, The New York Review of Books, 28 Mar. 2024
But after Moose pressures the more sheepish AJ to empty his bank account for an overpaying bid on the Snack Shack, the only way out of the red is going all-in on the business.
—J. Kim Murphy, Variety, 16 Mar. 2024
She and her family are welcomed by the queen, Isabelle (Robin Wright, gorgeously cloaked in robes, power and snobbery), and her fiancé, Prince Henry (Nick Robinson), who looks oddly sheepish, as if he’d been caught in a lie on his Royal Match profile.
—Tom Gliatto, Peoplemag, 8 Mar. 2024
See all Example Sentences for sheepish
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sheepish.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Sheepish.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sheepish. Accessed 11 Sep. 2024.
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