the.com/taciturnity
Silence with a personality — not shy, just unwilling to waste words on you.
means The quality of habitually saying little, of being reserved or disinclined to talk.
from From Latin taciturnitas, built on tacitus ('silent, unspoken'), the same root that gives us 'tacit.' Tacitus itself comes from tacere, 'to be silent' — the verb Rome used for holding one's tongue. The word passed through French before settling into English in its current Latinate heaviness, which suits it: a long, grave word for the act of saying nothing at all.
- not shyness
- shy people want to talk, this one doesn't
- etymology
- from latin tacere, to be silent
- coolidge test
- calvin coolidge made it a presidential trademark
- often mistaken
- for wisdom, sometimes correctly