English · Idiom Candidate

shrinking violet

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

A shy and modest person

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

người rụt rè và khiêm tốn

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: a small, delicate purple flower

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

At last … a wonder cure for shrinking violets

Julie T Wallace has never been a shrinking violet — which is probably just as well, as it would be almost impossible for her to fade quietly into the background.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “shrinking violet” mean?

A shy and modest person Literally: a small, delicate purple flower

Is “shrinking violet” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

👁 Views 0 today 0 past 7 days 0 this month 0 all time