reticent

comparative more reticent · superlative most reticent

1. Unwilling to communicate; keeping one's thoughts and opinions to oneself; reserved or restrained.

   She's rather reticent on the subject of her finances.

   5 more examples

   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.

   1856, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Result”, in English Traits, Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, →OCLC

   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.

   1870 April–September, Charles Dickens, chapter XXIII, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1870, →OCLC

   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.

   1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC

   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.

   1915 August–September, John Buchan, chapter 3, in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published October 1915, →OCLC

   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.

   1922, H. P. Lovecraft, The Music of Erich Zann

2. proscribedHesitant or not wanting to take some action; reluctant (usually followed by a verb in the infinitive).

   He is reticent to travel so much.

   4 more examples

   While many uncomfortable components of the Holocaust have been analyzed in minute detail, the rape of Jewish women during this era persists as a subject that scholars and victims alike are reticent to explore.

   2010, Helene J. Sinnreich, “The Rape of Jewish Women during the Holocaust”, in Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, page 108

   One letter from Deborah presents an especially fascinating contrast with Jane's letters to her brother. Whereas Jane was keen on discussing politics, Deborah was reticent to do so.

   2011, C. Dallett Hemphill, “chapter 3”, in Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History

   But I would now like to argue that there was for Derrida a privileged site in Ancient Philosophy for this question, one to which Derrida would repeatedly return in his writing and thinking – Socrates’ denigration or denunciation of writing, his attempt in the Phaedrus to exclude writing from thinking and philosophy proper. As I suggested at the outset, this claim regarding Derrida’s relation to the Greeks is one that Derrida himself would have been reticent to accept.

   2014, Michael Naas, edited by Zeynep Direk and Leonard Lawlor, A Companion to Derrida, page 236

   The police may be reticent to charge the alleged offender, prosecutors reticent to continue with the prosecution, and juries reticent to convict.

   2014, Ray Bull, Investigative Interviewing, page 3