He is reticent and he never speaks unless spoken to.
Source: tatoeba (303974)
Reticent
//ˈɹɛtɪsənt//
Synonyms for "reticent" (81 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (17)
Strong matches (24)
Related words (40)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Synonyms
4 entriesderived
3 entrieshas context
1 entriesrelated to
9 entriessimilar
6 entriesTranslations
54 translations across 26 languages.
Arabic
1 entries- كَتُوم adj (reserved)
Bulgarian
4 entries- необщителен adj (hesitant, reluctant)
- неохотен adj (hesitant, reluctant)
- резеревиран adj (reserved)
- сдържан adj (reserved)
Catalan
1 entries- reticent adj (reserved)
Chinese Mandarin
1 entries- 沉默 adj (reserved)
Danish
1 entries- tilbageholdende adj (reserved)
Dutch
1 entries- terughoudend adj (reserved)
Finnish
2 entries- vaitelias adj (reserved)
- vähäpuheinen adj (reserved)
French
2 entries- hésitant adj (reserved)
- réticent adj (reserved)
Galician
1 entries- reticente adj (reserved)
German
4 entries- still adj (reserved)
- unwillig adj (hesitant, reluctant)
- verschwiegen adj (reserved)
- zurückhaltend adj (reserved)
Greek
1 entries- κρυψίνους adj (reserved)
Hungarian
2 entries- hallgatag adj (reserved)
- visszafogott adj (reserved)
Italian
1 entries- reticente adj (reserved)
Japanese
1 entries- 寡黙 adj (reserved)
Latin
1 entries- reticentia adj (reserved)
Macedonian
2 entries- во́здржан adj (reserved)
- ко́леблив adj (hesitant, reluctant)
Māori
4 entries- hūnguengue adj (reserved)
- memeke adj (reserved)
- ngākau tōngā adj (reserved)
- tikumu adj (reserved)
Norwegian Bokmål
4 entries- reservert adj (hesitant, reluctant)
- stillfaren adj (reserved)
- tilbakeholden adj (reserved)
- tilbakeholden adj (hesitant, reluctant)
Occitan
1 entries- reticent adj (reserved)
Plautdietsch
1 entries- blank adj (reserved)
Polish
3 entries- dyskretny adj (reserved)
- małomówny adj (reserved)
- niechętny adj (hesitant, reluctant)
Portuguese
1 entries- reticente adj (reserved)
Russian
2 entries- сде́ржанный adj (reserved)
- скры́тный adj (reserved)
Serbo-Croatian
3 entries- povučen adj (reserved)
- ćutljiv adj (reserved)
- šutljiv adj (reserved)
Spanish
1 entries- reticente adj (reserved)
Swedish
4 entries- förtegen adj (reserved)
- sluten adj (reserved)
- tillbakadragen adj (reserved)
- tystlåten adj (reserved)
Sample sentences
13 total sentences available.
We have been reticent, or maybe just slow, or maybe we’ve denied the changes that are going on. And so we’ve been slow to react to them. We haven’t been proactive. We’ve been reactive.
Source: tatoeba (8185327)
While surgical masks are not so unusual in Asian countries, they are conspicuous in Western ones where people might be reticent to use them.
Source: tatoeba (8495748)
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.
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 13 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.