RETICENCE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Reticence

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/rˈɛtɪsəns/ Listen

noun

Reticence n.

The quality or state of being reticent, or keeping silence; the state of holding one's tonque; refraining to speak of that which is suggested; uncommunicativeness. "Such fine reserve and noble reticence."

(Rhet.) A figure by which a person really speaks of a thing while he makes a show as if he would say nothingon the subject.

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Etymology of 'Reticence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Reticence" Quotes from Famous Books

... come before. All through supper on the previous night, even after the discovery that Jill was supping at a near-by table with a man who was a stranger to her son, Lady Underhill had preserved a grim reticence with regard to her future daughter-in-law. But today she had spoken her mind with all the energy which comes of suppression. She had relieved herself with a flow of words of all the pent-up hostility that had been growing within her ...

— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... about her husband, but in this reticence she was not joined by Rose Dawn or Jennie Cassavant. Jennie maintained that the misfitted Mr. Lawrence was alive, very much so; that Esther and he weren't even divorced, but merely separated. The only sanction Mrs. Lawrence ever ...

— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... various journeys undertaken for the university; and, the more I saw of him, the deeper became my respect for him. There were, indeed, toward the end of his life, some things trying to one of my temperament, and among these things I may mention his exceeding reticence, and his willingness not only to labor but to wait; but these stood not at all in the way of my respect and affection ...

— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... of my friends, people on whose side I, too, am to be found, retort with another word: reticence. It is a mistake, they say, to try to uncover these things; leave the sexual instincts alone, to grow up and develop in the shy solitude they love, and they will be sure to grow up and develop wholesomely. But, as a matter of fact, that is precisely what we can not and will ...

— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... professional—in point of fact, it was Dr. Yate-Westbury's, the well-known specialist on mental diseases. She sent up no card and gave no name. On the contrary, she kept her veil down—and it was a very thick one. But Dr. Yate-Westbury made no comment on this reticence; it was a familiar occurrence with him—people are often ashamed to have it ...

— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

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