ppl. a. (UN-1 10.)
1770. Akenside, Pleas. Imag., IV. 16. An unpresuming guest.
1779. Moore, View of Soc. France, etc., I. 28. Unpresuming in argument, and … as well bred as those who have no other pretension.
1793. V. Knox, Lett. to Yng. Nobleman, Wks. 1824, V. 91. To the entire exclusion of modest unpresuming men.
1830. W. L. Bowles, Ken, I. p. xviii. The descendant of the great though unpresuming Locke.
1866. Liddon, Bamgton Lect., i. (1875), 7. The most unpresuming of the titles of the Messiah.
Hence Unpresumingness.
a. 1859. De Quincey, in H. A. Page, Life (1877), II. xix. 199. Two sound qualities are at the root of these unpleasant phenomena—modesty or unpresumingness in the first place.
