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How should you use taciturn?
Even if you consider yourself a person of few words, taciturn is a good one to keep in your pocket, if for no other reason than it’s an efficient way to describe your own particular deportment. While ramblers ramble and babblers babble, the taciturn among us turn things down a notch, preferring to keep mum rather than add their voices to the verbal hubbub. Taciturn traces back ultimately to the Latin verb tacēre, meaning “to be silent.” While English users were quicker to adopt other tacēre descendants such as the adjective tacit (“expressed without words” or “implied”) in the 1600s and even the noun taciturnity in the 1400s, taciturn wasn’t on anyone’s lips until the 1700s.
Examples of taciturn in a Sentence
Simon Schama, New Republic, 22 July 2002
The pipe-smoking Malcolm Cowley … though a faithful fellow-traveller, was too taciturn usually to show his hand.
—Mary McCarthy, Granta 27, Summer 1989
She was a small, taut, pale, wiry London girl, alarmingly taciturn, demon at basketball (at which she captained us) …
—Elizabeth Bowen, The Mulberry Tree, 1986
When he got to the substation that night, this private taciturn fellow had to spill his guts. If he didn't tell somebody, he might blow like a land mine.
—Joseph Wambaugh, Lines and Shadows, 1984
a somewhat taciturn young man
a taciturn man, he almost never initiates a conversation
Kimberly Roots, TVLine, 23 Mar. 2025
There’s the driver (Mitchell Cole), a taciturn dude with a thick Southern accent who spent some time in the military.
—Esther Zuckerman, IndieWire, 7 Mar. 2025
Gray Alys recruits the taciturn Boyce to be her guide through the treacherous region.
—Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Mar. 2025
At the first dinner party, George is taciturn behind his thick black glasses.
—Anne Thompson, IndieWire, 12 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for taciturn
Cite this Entry
“Taciturn.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/taciturn. Accessed 1 Apr. 2025.
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taciturn
adjective
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