Modifies a noun

• wife: At first she played her role as a dutiful wife, but then her husband admitted that he had a male lover.

• daughter: I was a dutiful daughter on the whole, wasn't I?

• son: The dutiful son laughed his mother's correspondence to scorn.

• child: At times he feels he is letting his parents down: a dutiful child should remember being cared for from the first.

• husband: During the week he is the dutiful husband to his Indian born wife and loving father to his two children.

• epidemiologist: Watch out for dutiful epidemiologists proving that it causes every known ill of mankind, as do tobacco and alcohol.

Modifying Another Word

• very: He comes across as a very dutiful, law-abiding citizen with the best interests of his traveling passengers at heart.

• merely: While some of the pictures are merely dutiful scene-setting, others are exciting enhancements of the story ( cf. the Hound of the Baskervilles!