TACITURN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does taciturn mean? 

• TACITURN (adjective)
  The adjective TACITURN has 1 sense:

1. habitually reserved and uncommunicative

  Familiarity information: TACITURN used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TACITURN (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Habitually reserved and uncommunicative

Similar:

buttoned-up ((British colloquial) not inclined to conversation)

reticent; untalkative (temperamentally disinclined to talk)

Also:

incommunicative; uncommunicative (not inclined to talk or give information or express opinions)

concise (expressing much in few words)

Antonym:

voluble (marked by a ready flow of speech)

Derivation:

taciturnity (the trait of being uncommunicative; not volunteering anything more than necessary)

 Context examples 

It is when he is on a scent and is not quite absolutely sure yet that it is the right one that he is most taciturn.

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

He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps a proud personage; but he was very kind to me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

All that day and the next and the next Holmes was in a mood which his friends would call taciturn, and others morose.

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

The dinner itself was neither well served nor well cooked, and the gloomy presence of the taciturn servant did not help to enliven us.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was taciturn, soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, always at hand when wanted, and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to consideration was his respectability.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

With these encouraging words the lady handed me over to the taciturn Austin, who had waited like a bronze statue of discretion during our short interview, and I was conducted to the end of the passage.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

She was an interesting person, this stern Australian nurse—taciturn, suspicious, ungracious, it took some time before Holmes’s pleasant manner and frank acceptance of all that she said thawed her into a corresponding amiability.

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