Well, here's
the oldest copy in the Internet Archive. It should be noted, though, that "shrinking violet" is a pre-existing term, and our preference, if not our policy, is to defer to pre-existing usage.
The description seems to follow real-world usage of the term to me: a person who's so shy as to be nearly unable to function in public. I see no problem with it.
In fiction, it's usually female, but male examples certainly exist.
That was meant to be a response to OP. I'm agreeing with you.
Edited by DoktorvonEurotrash on Jan 8th 2025 at 6:05:00 AM
How would you define what's the off-wiki usage of this phrase, though?
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova
Google's search results are subject to the filter bubble (as well as SEO bait).
You could try searching again, this time using a privacy search engine like DuckDuckGo or StartPage to see if the results are the same as Google's.
Alternatively, you can use any search engine, including Google, and add "site=reddit.com" without quotation marks to search for more organic use in various Reddit discussions.
Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 9th 2025 at 12:00:40 PM
Kirby is awesome.I used StartPage on a private tab and searched for "definition of shrinking violet" (without the quotes). The definition is more or less uniform between search results and the search engine summary: "A shy person." The difference between sources is solely about how shy should that count.
In this case, my issue is what's the threshold of it. It appears to me that it is frequently used to mean shyness generally, which I doubt is tropable. It needs to be of some severity, but how severe?
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra NovaI don't think "shyness" is chairs or anything. Personality trait tropes are generally not going to fall into that category because they're a fundamental aspect of character design and storytelling. To me this is similar to things like Nice Guy where it's less about severity and more about how important that trait is to their character. Anyone can be shy but a Shrinking Violet should be shy as a consistent and major character trait, at least relative to their other personality traits.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
In this case... I start to wonder the necessity of the Shyness Tropes index. It can be fairly said that the tropes on that index are subs of Shrinking Violet.
I wondered if we should mildly modify the definition to make it less gendered. The definitions I read are seldom gendered.
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova
Alleged Number1KirbyFan
Most of the Shyness Tropes are character traits or actions that aren't exclusive to shyness.

Shrinking Violet is a very old (it was there when I first joined in 2008) and frequently used trope (view ranked about #500 and nearly 10k wicks), but lately I see some problems with it.
I started to suspect the trope was originally envisioned as a specific kind of Women Are Delicate, which I would describe as "shy, demure, soft-spoken and somewhat withdrawn." I don't see much of an issue with the tropability of this definition, given it's a well known and frequently used archetype in different cultures.
However, I'm of the impression that the trope (at least) as used today (and I'd admit I've been subscribing to that definition until late 2024) just means "shy female" and some people don't even use it on males, which made me wonder if it's misused, or it's Chairs in the first place?
(Note that I haven't performed any serious investigation on the trope's origin, so correct me if I was wrong regarding the trope's original intent.)
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova