taut
/toːt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.91 in modern English
4
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of music, writing, etc., containing only relevant parts; brief and controlled.
adj
adj
Example Sentences
- "I watched him from the side as he strode along. His walk was quite different; his face too looked tauter."
- "In a sense, Michelangelo's David is everything his Bacchus was not: firmly in control of himself while the god of wine was teetering on the brink of dissolution; his senses heightened while Bacchus's are dulled. Where one is taut, the other is flaccid. David's toned, athletic body contrasts with Bacchus's effeminate form, illustrating the dichotomy in Michelangelo's mind between the active masculine force and the passive feminine."
- "The silky sarong fell away, pooling around her hips with a whisper. Her nipples were pink and taut, the rest of her naked body a soft glow as moonlight flowed through the living room."
- "If he curbs his swing a little and gets something crisper and tauter in his methods he may yet be very good."
- "The superbly crafted suspense thriller that director Jonathan Demme has made from Thomas Harris's taut best-selling novel The Silence of the Lambs slams you like a sudden blast of bone-chilling, pulse-pounding terror."
- "Quick action and dialogue create a taut story, although it is illustration that shapes the characters."
Etymology
The adjective is derived from Middle English taught [and other forms], Early Middle English tohte, towehte (“strained, stretched; distended; tight; firm”), probably from tough, touth, touʒth, toʒt (“powerful, strong; fierce, violent; not tender, tough; hardy, resilient; steadfast, stout; difficult to do or endure”) and possibly influenced by togen, towen, past participle of ten (“to extend, stretch out; to drag, haul, pull, tow, tug”) (modern English tee (“(obsolete) to draw, lead; to draw away; to go, proceed”)), or directly from its etymon Old English tēon (“to drag, draw, pull”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dewk- (“to draw, pull”)) The word may be related to thight (“(dialectal) compact, dense; close-fitting, tight”) and tight; and is cognate with Scots tacht, taght (“taut”). The verb is probably derived from the adjective.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /toːt/
- British English: /tɔːt/