reticent

See also: réticent

English

WOTD – 15 October 2006

Etymology

Latin reticēns, present participle of reticeō (“to keep silence”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹɛtɪsənt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Adjective

reticent (comparative more reticent, superlative most reticent)

1. Keeping one's thoughts and opinions to oneself; reserved or restrained.
   • 1856, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Result”, in English Traits, Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, →OCLC:

     They are slow and reticent, and are like a dull good horse which lets every nag pass him, but with whip and spur will run down every racer in the field.

   • 1870 April–September, Charles Dickens, chapter XXIII, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1870, →OCLC:

     But he was a reticent as well as an eccentric man; and he made no mention of a certain evening when he warmed his hands at the gatehouse fire, and looked steadily down upon a certain heap of torn and miry clothes upon the floor.

   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC:

     She had told him she was not now at Marlott, but had been curiously reticent as to her actual address, and the only course was to go to Marlott and inquire for it.

   • 1915 August–September, John Buchan, chapter 3, in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, published October 1915, →OCLC:

     The milkman had been released, I read, and the true criminal, about whose identity the police were reticent, was believed to have got away from London by one of the northern lines.

   • 1922, H. P. Lovecraft, The Music of Erich Zann:

     The inhabitants of that street impressed me peculiarly; At first I thought it was because they were all silent and reticent; but later decided it was because they were all very old.

   • 1922, Rafael Sabatini, “chapter XXV”, in Captain Blood: His Odyssy:

     But they were not reticent enough to prevent the circulation of certain uneasy rumours and extravagant stories of discreditable adventures.

2. (proscribed) Hesitant or not wanting to take some action; reluctant (usually followed by a verb in the infinitive).
   • 2010, Helene J. Sinnreich, “The Rape of Jewish Women during the Holocaust”, in Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, page 108:

     While many uncomfortable components of the Holocaust have been analyzed in minute detail, the rape of Jewish women during this era persists as a subject that scholars and victims alike are reticent to explore.

   • 2011, C. Dallett Hemphill, “chapter 3”, in Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History:

     One letter from Deborah presents an especially fascinating contrast with Jane's letters to her brother. Whereas Jane was keen on discussing politics, Deborah was reticent to do so.

   • 2014, Michael Naas, edited by Zeynep Direk and Leonard Lawlor, A Companion to Derrida, page 236:

     But I would now like to argue that there was for Derrida a privileged site in Ancient Philosophy for this question, one to which Derrida would repeatedly return in his writing and thinking – Socrates’ denigration or denunciation of writing, his attempt in the Phaedrus to exclude writing from thinking and philosophy proper. As I suggested at the outset, this claim regarding Derrida’s relation to the Greeks is one that Derrida himself would have been reticent to accept.

   • 2014, Ray Bull, Investigative Interviewing, page 3:

     The police may be reticent to charge the alleged offender, prosecutors reticent to continue with the prosecution, and juries reticent to convict.

Usage notes

• The second sense of reticent has developed in the years since the end of the Second World War and is still not universally accepted as correct usage. However, of the major English-language dictionaries, Merriam-Webster does recognize the newer sense [1].

Synonyms

• (sense 1) reserved, restrained, tight-lipped (See also Thesaurus:taciturn)
• (sense 2) reluctant, unwilling

Translations

reserved

• Bulgarian: сдържан (bg) (sdǎržan), резеревиран (rezereviran)
• Catalan: reticent
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 沉默 (zh) (chénmò) (taciturn)

• Danish: tilbageholdende
• Dutch: terughoudend (nl)
• Finnish: vaitelias (fi), vähäpuheinen (fi)
• French: réticent (fr), hésitant (fr)
• Galician: reticente
• German: still (de), verschwiegen (de), zurückhaltend (de)
• Hungarian: visszafogott (hu), hallgatag (hu)
• Italian: reticente (it)
• Japanese: 寡黙 (ja) (かもく, kamoku)
• Latin: reticentia f
• Macedonian: во́здржан (vózdržan)
• Maori: whakakumu, ngākau tōngā, hūnguengue, tikumu, memeke
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: stillfaren, tilbakeholden

• Occitan: reticent
• Plautdietsch: blank
• Polish: małomówny (pl), dyskretny (pl)
• Portuguese: reticente (pt)
• Russian: сде́ржанный (ru) (sdéržannyj), скры́тный (ru) (skrýtnyj)
• Serbo-Croatian: šutljiv (sh), ćutljiv, povučen (sh)
• Spanish: reticente (es)
• Swedish: tillbakadragen (sv), sluten (sv), förtegen (sv), tystlåten (sv)

hesitant, reluctant

• Bulgarian: необщителен (bg) (neobštitelen), неохотен (bg) (neohoten)
• German: zögerlich (de), zurückhaltend (de), unwillig (de)
• Macedonian: ко́леблив (kólebliv)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: tilbakeholden, reservert, uvillig (no)

Anagrams

• Netretić

Catalan

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin reticentem. First attested in 1868.

Adjective

reticent m or f (masculine and feminine plural reticents)

1. reticent

Related terms

• reticència

Further reading

• “reticent” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “reticent” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “reticent” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Latin

Verb

reticent

1. third-person plural present active indicative of reticeō

Occitan

Etymology

From Latin reticēns.

Adjective

reticent m (feminine singular reticenta, masculine plural reticents, feminine plural reticentas)

1. reticent

Related terms

• reticéncia

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French réticent.

Adjective

reticent m or n (feminine singular reticentă, masculine plural reticenți, feminine and neuter plural reticente)

1. reluctant

Declension

Declension of reticent

		singular			plural
		masculine	neuter	feminine	masculine	neuter	feminine
nominative/ accusative	indefinite	reticent		reticentă	reticenți	reticente
	definite	reticentul		reticenta	reticenții	reticentele
genitive/ dative	indefinite	reticent		reticente	reticenți	reticente
	definite	reticentului		reticentei	reticenților	reticentelor