RETICENCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does reticence mean? 

• RETICENCE (noun)
  The noun RETICENCE has 1 sense:

1. the trait of being uncommunicative; not volunteering anything more than necessary

  Familiarity information: RETICENCE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RETICENCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The trait of being uncommunicative; not volunteering anything more than necessary

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

reserve; reticence; taciturnity

Hypernyms ("reticence" is a kind of...):

uncommunicativeness (the trait of being uncommunicative)

Derivation:

reticent (temperamentally disinclined to talk)

 Context examples 

It was because of this reticence that he never alarmed her.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

You must not be angry with me, Art, because his very reticence means that all his brains are working for her good.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

My participation in some of his adventures was always a privilege which entailed discretion and reticence upon me.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If in telling the story I seem to be somewhat vague in certain details, the public will readily understand that there is an excellent reason for my reticence.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Too long had he cultivated reticence, aloofness, and moroseness.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

This reticence upon his part had increased the somewhat inhuman effect which he produced upon me, until sometimes I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy as he was pre-eminent in intelligence.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Yet it was right here, in his reticence, that the strength of his wooing lay.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

All the morbid reticence seems to have passed from her, and she has just reminded me, as if I needed any reminding, of that night, and that it was here, on this very seat, I found her asleep.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

For a long time, even with the utmost discretion and reticence, it would have been impossible to make the facts public, but now the principal person concerned is beyond the reach of human law, and with due suppression the story may be told in such fashion as to injure no one.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But his reticence of love prolonged it.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)