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/hjumˈɪlɪti/ Listen

noun

Humility n. (pl. humilities)

The state or quality of being humble; freedom from pride and arrogance; lowliness of mind; a modest estimate of one's own worth; a sense of one's own unworthiness through imperfection and sinfulness; self-abasement; humbleness. "Serving the Lord with all humility of mind."

An act of submission or courtesy. "With these humilities they satisfied the young king."

Synonyms: Lowliness; humbleness; meekness; modesty; diffidence. Humility, Modesty, Diffidence. Diffidence is a distrust of our powers, combined with a fear lest our failure should be censured, since a dread of failure unconnected with a dread of censure is not usually called diffidence. It may be carried too far, and is not always, like modesty and humility, a virtue. Modesty, without supposing self-distrust, implies an unwillingness to put ourselves forward, and an absence of all over-confidence in our own powers. Humility consists in rating our claims low, in being willing to waive our rights, and take a lower place than might be our due. It does not require of us to underrate ourselves.

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Etymology of 'Humility'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Humility" Quotes from Famous Books

... in a picture. Titian's Queen of Cyprus, or any party of that kind; but for flesh and blood I like humility—a woman who knows she is human, and not infallible, and only just a little better than you or me. When I choose a wife, she will be no such example of cultivated perfection as my sister Lesbia. I want no goddess, but a nice ...

— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... know not What tax of arrogance I may incurr, Should I presume, though courted by your Favours, To take a place amongst you; I had rather Give proof of my unfeign'd humility By force, though mean, yet more becoming place, Than run the ...

— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... She wore now an air of constraint in his presence, as if she understood what she had not felt the week before under the first blow of her misfortune, and she exhibited an excessive deference towards him, a mournful humility, and made touching efforts to please him, as if to pay him back by her attentions for the kindness he had manifested towards her. They were a long time at lunch talking over the business, which had brought him there. She did not want so much money. It was too much. She earned enough ...

— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... letter with a head of Homer than ever that old blind bard did in reciting his Iliad. These raise a huge opinion of themselves out of nothing, as there are those who shrink from their own merits into the shade of unconquerable humility. I know one person at least, who would rather be the author of an unsuccessful farce than of a successful tragedy. Repeated mortification has produced an inverted ambition in his mind, and made failure the bitter test of desert. He cannot lift his drooping head to gaze on the gaudy ...

— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... missionary spirit just then; his experience at Chatsea had made him pessimistic about missionary effort in the Church of England. If a man like Father Rowley had failed to win the support of his ecclesiastical superiors, Mark, who possessed more humility than is usual at twenty-one, did not fancy that he should be successful. The ambition to become a friar was revived by an incomprehensible, or if not incomprehensible, certainly by an inexplicable impulse to put himself in tune with the landscape, ...

— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

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