Taciturn and Tacit – quiet words

Hello,

This week’s word is taciturn. I’m surprised I haven’t delved into this one before as it was a favourite adjective of mine during my teens. For this I have to point the finger of blame firmly in the direction of the excellent adventure writer Alistair MacLean (1922-1987).

I frequently browsed second-hand bookshops and market stalls and his books were always on my mental “I want to get” list. He wrote some of the best war thrillers I’ve read, probably because he drew upon his own experiences in the Royal Navy in World War II. He sold more than 150 million copies but even if you’ve never read his books, you have probably watched the movies. “Guns of Navarone” and “Where Eagles Dare” were amongst the most famous.

His stories feature plenty of action and double-crossing plot twists. He nearly always has one character who is described as taciturn and usually one whose surname was Smith, Smythe, or Smithy. I loved the word taciturn the first time I read it and ended up christening one of the chairs in our kitchen Smithy in homage because, of course, chairs don’t talk very much. My parents thought I was insane.

If you say somebody is taciturn what you mean is that they are usually silent. Perhaps in our more noisy world there aren’t too many taciturn people left but I haven’t seen the word in any stories recently which is a shame.

“Grumpy Tiki” – a wood carving by my DH whose taciturn face adorns our garden

Taciturnity was the way the word entered English. This is the quality of being taciturn and it arrived in the mid 1400s from Old French taciturnité and before that from Latin taciturnus (inclined to be silent) and tacitus (silent). The arrival of taciturn followed in the late 1700s from the same sources.

Tacitus in Latin also gives us some other words. By the 1600s we had tacit (silent or unspoken) as a way of describing something which is done without words, which is assumed e.g. tacit agreement. The Proto Indo European root of the Latin word is tak (to be silent) and gives us words about being silent, or being unable to speak in Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, and Old High German.

Reticence, the avoidance of speaking too freely, or too much also arrived around 1600 via French and Latin, this time from reticere (keep silent) in Latin, but ultimately from the same roots.

Various ways of being quiet, but all from the same source. I think Smithy the Chair would approve of them all.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. I finished my NaNoWriMo 2022 writing challenge by the way. My 14th win in a row. The first draft of “Words the Weather Gave Us” is incomplete but I made a sizable start on it. I’ll put it aside now while I work on other projects, but you’ll hear more about it later.