reticent
/ˈrɛt ə sənt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.62 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Unwilling to communicate; keeping one's thoughts and opinions to oneself; reserved or restrained.
adj
Hesitant or not wanting to take some action; reluctant (usually followed by a verb in the infinitive).
Example Sentences
- "She's rather reticent on the subject of her finances."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
Etymology
Word Breakdown
- Root: *te(H)k-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈrɛt ə sənt/
- British English: /ˈɹɛtɪsənt/
Inflected Forms
more reticent (comparative)
most reticent (superlative)