Luke 11:8

The term ἀναίδεια (or ἀναιδεία) is uniformly pejorative in Classical Greek, denoting shamelessness, impudence, or insolence, i.e., the absence of αἰδώς (modesty, reverence).

It appears as a moral vice in authors such as Sophocles (El. 607), Euripides (Med. 472), and Plato (Phaedr. 254d), and is even personified as Ἀναίδεια, the allegorical counterpart to Αἰδώς (Xen. Symp. 8.35).

In legal contexts, it may also signify implacability or pitilessness (cf. the ἀναιδείας λίθος, Paus. 1.28.5).

The idea of a "rhetorically softened sense" akin to bold persistence, is hardly attested in Greek thought or literature, but is assumed (due to bias) to be the case in the one use of it in Luke 11:8.