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taciturn
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  • ...but when he left the village, for days or years at a time, nobody knew where he went or what he did, and when he returned he was more taciturn than ever and none dared ask.   (source)
    taciturn = reserved and uncommunicative
  • He recalled his mother's growing taciturnity   (source)
    taciturnity = with a tendency to be reserved and not to talk
  • And the German, roused from his taciturnity, turned to Vronsky.   (source)
    taciturnity = reserve and reticence (tendency not to communicate)
  • Samuel Walter McCandless, Jr., fifty-six years old, is a bearded, taciturn man with longish salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back from a high forehead.†   (source)
  • He'd been taciturn, and vengeful.†   (source)
  • The affable man gradually turned into a grouchy, taciturn recluse.†   (source)
  • I had thought I was going to get Taciturn Will, Sarcastic Will.†   (source)
  • The engineer is a taciturn, pungent man named Walter Bernd whose pupils are misaligned.†   (source)
  • There's enigmatic Evan, taciturn Evan, passionate Evan, and now shy little boy Evan.†   (source)
  • And even then it's not easy, because most of them are shy, rather than taciturn, and getting any of them to say anything self-congratulatory is close to impossible.†   (source)
  • It was that the solemn mother-daughter talk promised over the years for this night, the entire sex education which our taciturn society provided, was now not possible.†   (source)
  • I have two nurses who check in on me.... One is a taciturn doughy man with blond hair and a mustache, who I don't much like.†   (source)
  • Wilem remained his same taciturn self.†   (source)
  • There's a man a few cabins away, a taciturn fellow, a hippie dropout of the Grizzly Adams, homemade-granola variety—full beard and turquoise rings and a guitar he plays on his back deck some nights.†   (source)
  • In reality, Fermina Daza knew very little about this taciturn suitor who had appeared in her life like a winter swallow and whose name she would not even have known if it had not been for his signature on the letter.†   (source)
  • Dave is one of the most unsentimental people I have ever met, a quiet stoic cut from taciturn Pennsylvania Dutch stock.†   (source)
  • She said that Harriet had been taciturn that day, which was usual, and mostly she just followed the others.†   (source)
  • He was tall and very black, and taciturn; Eric always wondered what he was thinking.†   (source)
  • His wife was as talkative as he was taciturn.†   (source)
  • Looking at her, he saw something utterly foreign to his mother's taciturn nature.†   (source)
  • They are his other lieutenants, closer to Keenan's age than Mazen's and possessed of the younger man's taciturn coolness.†   (source)
  • Taciturn and withdrawn boys who hadn't so much as grunted for the first two-thirds of practice now shouted insistently for the ball.†   (source)
  • Mr. King was lean and lanky, taciturn and weathered, always with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.†   (source)
  • Despite the compliment, I liked Odin better as a taciturn half-troll than as a motivational speaker.†   (source)
  • The soldiers were a taciturn lot and passed without much talk.†   (source)
  • He was seeing something completely concealed, an unwhisperable thing under the standoff man, the taciturn man hard to befriend.†   (source)
  • She was tall, trim, and taciturn.†   (source)
  • As with the taciturn men of Lake Wobegon, language was a currency he was loath to spend carelessly.†   (source)
  • Harold was astonished to learn that his giant, taciturn short-order cook was involved in a NASA-sponsored underwater-robotics contest.†   (source)
  • My grandmother is stoic and taciturn.†   (source)
  • The boy rode ahead of me, bareback on his horse, as close to the animal as if they were a single body, and I was behind, taciturn, brooding over my rage.†   (source)
  • He could engross himself in an inconsequential task for hours without growing restless or bored, as oblivious to fatigue as the stump of a tree, and almost as taciturn.†   (source)
  • Harwyn was a different sort of Plumm; hard-eyed and taciturn, unforgiving …. and deadly, with his hammer in his hand.†   (source)
  • He'd been taciturn the rest of the way home, his mouth set in a tense line.†   (source)
  • Perceptive, cool, taciturn and open by turns, physical.†   (source)
  • "Austrians are better with bayonets than we are," said Biondo, a taciturn machinist from Torino, who had enlisted in the navy because of his belief that he would be most valuable in the engine rooms of stricken and damaged ships.†   (source)
  • Posing as a gifted if taciturn European-based art restorer, he eliminated some of Israel's most dangerous foes—including Abu Jihad, Yasir Arafat's talented second-in-command, whom he killed in front of his wife and children in Tunis.†   (source)
  • However, since he had so far seemed to be naturally taciturn — except with his dogs — and because I did not feel it right, on such short acquaintance, to intrude into his personal affairs, I made no attempt to discover the nature of his distress.†   (source)
  • It's the story of a middle-aged man who'd come from a farm in the Middle West, who's taciturn and unhappy as a teacher of linguistics and now has reached a critical point in his life.†   (source)
  • But after that one afternoon of talk, Meo was his taciturn self again, saying little, keeping his thoughts to himself.†   (source)
  • Short, red-haired, not much taller than a fireplug but just as solid, he prowled the streets, taciturn and alone, looking forblood.†   (source)
  • He was a scowling, taciturn man who made no pretense of wishing to engage in small talk with me.†   (source)
  • He was proud, straightforward, taciturn.†   (source)
  • This heaviness had steadily increased while he sat and waited and by now the air felt like iron and it was almost as if he could taste in his mouth the sour and cold, taciturn taste of iron.†   (source)
  • The youth, inexperience, and taciturnity of Alice Trask all turned out to be assets for Cyrus.   (source)
  • He looked at me with the contained amusement that is considered taciturnity by non-Yankees.†   (source)
  • A taciturn girl with hostile vibrations.†   (source)
  • When he tried to be sociable over dinner, she was taciturn to the point of rudeness.†   (source)
  • He was taciturn but pleasant, with broad experience.†   (source)
  • When he did not pursue the matter, Saphira withdrew into a taciturn silence.†   (source)
  • He has become more taciturn: he too now communicates by postcard.†   (source)
  • On the contrary, Bublanski was beginning to have some respect for Andersson's taciturn skill.†   (source)
  • I said as much, but Mike went taciturn and left without another word.†   (source)
  • Edklinth thought of him as a taciturn man who could act ruthlessly when necessary.†   (source)
  • After him came his assistant, who was as garrulous as her superior was taciturn.†   (source)
  • He was intelligent, very brave, taciturn, and sarcastic.†   (source)
  • Lou Kasischke, the gentlemanly lawyer I'd met at the airport, had climbed six of the Seven Summits-as had Yasuko Namba, forty-seven, a taciturn personnel director who worked at the Tokyo branch of Federal Express.†   (source)
  • She's taciturn, but so am I. Is she waiting for me to start something, reveal myself, or is she a believer, engrossed in inner meditation?†   (source)
  • Without speaking, he gave an encouraging hug to his wife, who had become ever more taciturn as the day wore on.†   (source)
  • Florentino Ariza developed methods that seemed incredible in someone like him, taciturn and thin and dressed like an old man from another time.†   (source)
  • It was not easy for her to imagine Florentino Ariza as he had been then, much less to believe that the taciturn boy, so vulnerable in the rain, was the moth-eaten old wreck who had stood in front of her with no consideration for her situation, or the slightest respect for her grief, and had seared her soul with a flaming insult that still made it difficult for her to breathe.†   (source)
  • The name dated from colonial times, when the taciturn scribes in their vests and false cuffs first began to sit there, waiting for a poor man's fee to write all kinds of documents: memoranda of complaints or petition, legal testimony, cards of congratulation or condolence, love letters appropriate to any stage in an affair.†   (source)
  • Murtagh was taciturn, but eventually she succeeded in drawing him out again, and they passed the time talking about matters of little import.†   (source)
  • We sat around her hospital bed in the ICU, her taciturn grandfather having drawn the short straw, I guess, because he was the one chosen to break the news that her parents, Kat and Denny, had been killed instantly in the car crash that had landed her here.†   (source)
  • Taciturn, silent, insensible to the new breath of vitality that was shaking the house, Colonel Aureliano Buendia could understand only that the secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.†   (source)
  • Tough, taciturn, temperamental.†   (source)
  • Othell Yarwyck was as stolid and unimaginative as he was taciturn, and the First Rangers seemed to die as quick as they were named.†   (source)
  • Jaime gave one of his deep laughs that rose up from his stomach and that, since he was a taciturn man, she rarely heard.†   (source)
  • He made for better company than the taciturn She-Bear, and she was elsewise alone amongst five thousand foes.†   (source)
  • Taciturn they are.†   (source)
  • But other qualities of the Balti, a taciturn suspicion of outsiders, along with their unyielding faith, have prevented Westerners from celebrating them in the same fashion as they fetishize the Buddhist Sherpa.†   (source)
  • Although he'd contributed to the recruiting effort to find new players, at the practices following tryouts he was taciturn and irascible.†   (source)
  • They perspired with the sweat of a horse and had a smell of suntanned hide and the taciturn and impenetrable perseverance of men from the uplands.†   (source)
  • Although Mike continued to harbor a deep-rooted suspicion that I was not quite right in the head and might yet prove dangerous unless closely watched, he loosened up as much as his taciturn nature would permit and tried to be co-operative.†   (source)
  • The old one was Garth, huge and bald and taciturn, who wore the same greasy leather jerkin every day and always seemed to have a glower on his face.†   (source)
  • Pedro Segundo was waiting for them at the station with the car, and Blanca was surprised to hear him whistling all the way to Tres Marias, because he had such a taciturn reputation.†   (source)
  • He was short and stocky, with a black suit on and a hat that was also black, enormous, pulled down to his taciturn eyes.†   (source)
  • Finally he reached the place where Melquiades used to set up his tent and he found a taciturn Armenian who in Spanish was hawking a syrup to make oneself invisible.†   (source)
  • At seven in the morning, when Colonel Gerineldo Marquez came to fetch him, in the company of a group of rebel officers, he found him more taciturn than ever, more pensive and solitary.†   (source)
  • In the last ones he could be seen to be wearing a dark coat and a milk scarf, pale in the face, taciturn from absence on the deck of a mournful ship that had come to be like a sleepwalker on the autumnal seas.†   (source)
  • Upset by the news, Jose Arcadio Buendia stood motionless, trying to rise above his affliction, until the group dispersed, called away by other artifices, and the puddle of the taciturn Armenian evaporated completely.†   (source)
  • …of the rain. the merchandise in the booths was falling apart, the cloths spread over the doors were splotched with mold, the counters undermined by termites, the walls eaten away by dampness, but the Arabs of the third generation were sitting in the same place and in the same position as their fathers and grandfathers, taciturn, dauntless, invulnerable to time and disaster, as alive or as dead as they had been after the insomnia plague and Colonel Aureliano Buendia's thirty-two wars.†   (source)
  • The first night that the group visited that greenhouse of illusions the splendid and taciturn old woman who guarded the entrance in a wicker rocking chair felt that time was turning back to its earliest origins when among the five who were arriving she saw a bony, jaundiced man with Tartar cheekbones, marked forever and from the beginning of the world with the pox of solitude.†   (source)
  • So we would try to explain to the distraught suburbanites that things were not always what they seemed, that the parents and relatives of these children spent a great deal of money so their children would not be "shame" when they went to Washington, and that the children were often taciturn and remote with strangers.†   (source)
  • Hating Walter's taciturn Irish stupidity for getting me into this, I unstrapped my skates, got to my feet, and balled my hands into fists.†   (source)
  • He had a rich deep voice, good both in song and in speech, and while he had no brogue there was a rise and a lilt and a cadence to his talk that made it sound sweet in the ears of the taciturn farmers from the valley bottom.†   (source)
  • I heard many stories about the Isle—I remember it is Isle and not Island—and was given much taciturn advice.†   (source)
  • I have always heard that Maine people are rather taciturn, but for this candidate for Mount Rushmore to point twice in an afternoon was to be unbearably talkative.†   (source)
  • "My brother is a man of great taciturnity and strong mind, and when he speaks, though he practices no graces and ingratiations, all men, especially those of the sober sort who have responsibility and power, weigh his words with respect.†   (source)
  • Uncertain at first, but continually spurred on and encouraged by Aunt Bertha and David's mother, Mr. Sternowitz gradually lost some of his apprehension at the other man's chill taciturnity and began to speak more freely.†   (source)
  • Nevertheless, Milly did not regard his taciturnity as unfavorable to her.†   (source)
  • His mother's taciturnity was not without ominousness, but he appeared not to care.†   (source)
  • 'Well,' replied Newman, with his accustomed taciturnity; 'both well.'†   (source)
  • Only, Courfeyrac saw this change in Marius, that his taciturnity was of the beaming order.†   (source)
  • In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity Prince Andrew now seemed excited.†   (source)
  • The prisoner had relapsed into his taciturnity.†   (source)
  • Odd it was, as Miss Kilman stood there (and stand she did, with the power and taciturnity of some prehistoric monster armoured for primeval warfare), how, second by second, the idea of her diminished, how hatred (which was for ideas, not people) crumbled, how she lost her malignity, her size, became second by second merely Miss Kilman, in a mackintosh, whom Heaven knows Clarissa would have liked to help.†   (source)
  • At Gravier's where they ate, and in the evening at the Versailles or at the Closerie des Lilas Clutton was inclined to taciturnity.†   (source)
  • The band of silver paleness along the east horizon made even the distant parts of the Great Plain appear dark and near; and the whole enormous landscape bore that impress of reserve, taciturnity, and hesitation which is usual just before day.†   (source)
  • The business of eating and the hurry maintained by Jett were not altogether cause for this taciturnity.†   (source)
  • A fear of rebuff prevented him from affability, and he concealed his shyness, which was still intense, under a frigid taciturnity.†   (source)
  • He had startled Laramie out of his habitual set taciturnity; but even as he looked the light that might have been amaze and joy faded out of his face, leaving it the same old mask.†   (source)
  • Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tempered to his own grave mien; but his taciturnity was respected and it was only on rare occasions that one of the older men of the place detained him for a word.†   (source)
  • Perhaps his taciturnity hid a contempt for the human race which had abandoned the great dreams of his youth and now wallowed in sluggish ease; or perhaps these thirty years of revolution had taught him that men are unfit for liberty, and he thought that he had spent his life in the pursuit of that which was not worth the finding.†   (source)
  • Jett's domineering way might be responsible for the discontent of his wife and the taciturnity of his men.†   (source)
  • The major characteristics discoverable by the stranger in Mr F.'s Aunt, were extreme severity and grim taciturnity; sometimes interrupted by a propensity to offer remarks in a deep warning voice, which, being totally uncalled for by anything said by anybody, and traceable to no association of ideas, confounded and terrified the Mind.†   (source)
  • The next day, which was Sunday, passed nearly in the same manner as regarded their taciturnity, Bathsheba going to church both morning and afternoon.†   (source)
  • But silence reigned in all this little world at the arrival of the soup, and the national taciturnity resumed its empire even over the children.†   (source)
  • When his mind had been weaker his heart had led him to speak out; but reason having now somewhat recovered itself he sank into taciturnity.†   (source)
  • Mr Flintwinch looked on as he re-lighted it at the lamp in the hall, and preserved a profound taciturnity respecting the person who had been holding him in conversation.†   (source)
  • She had obviously not heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me, from her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself, notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue importance to whatever revelations had been made her.†   (source)
  • Newman, who in power of taciturnity was excelled by few people, made no attempt to break silence; and so they went on, until they had very nearly reached Miss Morleena's home, when Mr Lillyvick said: 'Were the Kenwigses very much overpowered, Mr Noggs, by that news?'†   (source)
  • Whether this apparent cause were the real cause, or whether it were an assumed one to escape an intercourse that would have been irksome to him, nobody but himself could have said precisely; but his taciturnity was unbroken, and the woman enjoyed no society whatever from his presence.†   (source)
  • …daunted by this repulse, Nicholas returned to the charge next day, emboldened by the circumstance of Mr Linkinwater being in a very talkative and communicative mood; but, directly he resumed the theme, Tim relapsed into a state of most provoking taciturnity, and from answering in monosyllables, came to returning no answers at all, save such as were to be inferred from several grave nods and shrugs, which only served to whet that appetite for intelligence in Nicholas, which had already…†   (source)
  • My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St. John's taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise.†   (source)
  • Lucetta, forming the third and haloed figure, was opposite them; Elizabeth-Jane, being out of the game, and out of the group, could observe all from afar, like the evangelist who had to write it down: that there were long spaces of taciturnity, when all exterior circumstances were subdued to the touch of spoons and china, the click of a heel on the pavement under the window, the passing of a wheelbarrow or cart, the whistling of the carter, the gush of water into householders' buckets…†   (source)
  • Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.†   (source)
  • The kind-hearted gentleman omitted to add that Newman Noggs, being utterly destitute, served him for rather less than the usual wages of a boy of thirteen; and likewise failed to mention in his hasty chronicle, that his eccentric taciturnity rendered him an especially valuable person in a place where much business was done, of which it was desirable no mention should be made out of doors.†   (source)
  • He was tall, taciturn, soldierly, square-shouldered.†   (source)
  • He led off by remarking that I had the reputation of being a taciturn, rather self-centered person,†   (source)
  • But these men were a taciturn lot, picking their words carefully.†   (source)
  • They were inclined to be taciturn before the sun came, only making occasional remarks, or crying their single warning-note if danger threatened.†   (source)
  • Old and young, talkative and taciturn, rich planter and sallow Cracker, they all had two things in common, lice and dysentery.†   (source)
  • Finally a doctor came, gray-haired, white-coated, spectacled, efficient, serious, taciturn, bearing a tray upon which sat a bottle of mysterious fluid and a hypodermic needle.†   (source)
  • Gaheris explained, with unusual freedom since he was a taciturn boy: "She told Sir Grummore that this King's lovesick melancholy could be dispelled by interesting him in his old pursuits.†   (source)
  • And urged on by only a sympathetic look from Luter, to hear him speak of his youth, he, who was so taciturn and thin-lipped, whom David never could think of as having a youth, speaking of his youth, of the black and white bulls he had tended for his father (and try to hide a frown at the word, father, he, who never hid displeasure), how they had fed them mash from his father's yeast mill, how he had won a prize with them from the hand of Franz Josef, the King.†   (source)
  • The defeated knights, jogging home with their bruises, missed the conviviality which usually happened on tournament evenings, wondered who the taciturn champion could be, and talked superstitiously among themselves.†   (source)
  • He did not make any overtures to the taciturn proprietor.†   (source)
  • He was the gaunt, taciturn individual we had seen at the wheel.†   (source)
  • From that moment, however, the old nakhoda became taciturn.†   (source)
  • It had turned her passion into stone, and it made the surly taciturn Tamb' Itam almost loquacious.†   (source)
  • Clutton, more taciturn than ever, did not answer, but he looked at Lawson with a sardonic air.†   (source)
  • XCIII Next morning Mildred was sulky and taciturn.†   (source)
  • ...said Mr. Cruncher, with a taciturn and iron-bound visage.†   (source)
  • He was very taciturn, this worthy signor.†   (source)
  • He was morose and taciturn even with this old woman.†   (source)
  • He talked very little, and seemed all the more mysterious for his taciturn manner.†   (source)
  • Prince Nicholas came in serious and taciturn.†   (source)
  • But you know what Mr Merdle is; you know how taciturn and reserved he is.†   (source)
  • He was a young man of about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and taciturn.†   (source)
  • This taciturn grating was a receiver of stolen goods.†   (source)
  • He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps a proud personage; but he was very kind to me.†   (source)
  • By nature taciturn, he now merely growled occasionally like a bear, and glared contemptuously upon the "beggar," who, being somewhat of a man of the world, and a diplomatist, tried to insinuate himself into the bear's good graces.†   (source)
  • This would not have seemed unusual, considering the taciturn habit of Indians, had he not remembered seeing Willetts speak to the trio.†   (source)
  • The King chafed bitterly over the stupendous indignity thus put upon his royalty, but Hendon was moody and taciturn.†   (source)
  • Indeed, it affected the entire atmosphere of the flat, as such things are inclined to do, and gave to his wife's mind its subdued and tactful turn, anxious to avoid taciturn replies.†   (source)
  • Nicole's momentary glimpse of his expression, taciturn and thoughtful and, in the second of seeing her, wide-eyed and alert, disturbed her.†   (source)
  • ...but grandfather was naturally taciturn, and Jake and Otto were often so tired after supper that I used to feel as if I were surrounded by a wall of silence.†   (source)
  • His manner was very sober and set; his bearing was that of a naturally taciturn man possessed by an idea.†   (source)
  • The others were all so different—taciturn at times—and for the most part so sinister, crude or remote.†   (source)
  • She felt thoroughly bound to him as a wife, and that her lot was cast with his, whatever it might be; but she began to see that he was gloomy and taciturn, not a young, strong, and buoyant man.†   (source)
  • Indeed, they had all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak, endowed with very uncanny voices.†   (source)
  • He was taciturn, and what Philip learnt about him he learnt from others: it appeared that he had fought with Garibaldi against the Pope, but had left Italy in disgust when it was clear that all his efforts for freedom, by which he meant the establishment of a republic, tended to no more than an exchange of yokes; he had been expelled from Geneva for it was not known what political offences.†   (source)
  • He was very poor company, himself, and even his acute preoccupation and his general lack of the habit of pondering the impression he produced did not prevent him from reflecting that his companions must be puzzled to see how poor Bellegarde came to take such a fancy to this taciturn Yankee that he must needs have him at his death-bed.†   (source)
  • Thereupon Elizabeth, being instructed by nods and motions from the taciturn landlord as to where she could find the different things, trotted up and down stairs with materials for her own and her parent's meal.†   (source)
  • But now it appeared that Petrovitch was in a sober condition, and therefore rough, taciturn, and inclined to demand, Satan only knows what price.†   (source)
  • They could not every day sit so grim and taciturn; and it was impossible, however ill-tempered they might be, that the universal scowl they wore was their every-day countenance.†   (source)
  • I remember how I, invariably so taciturn, suddenly fastened upon Zverkov, when one day talking at a leisure moment with his schoolfellows of his future relations with the fair sex, and growing as sportive as a puppy in the sun, he all at once declared that he would not leave a single village girl on his estate unnoticed, that that was his DROIT DE SEIGNEUR, and that if the peasants dared to protest he would have them all flogged and double the tax on them, the bearded rascals.†   (source)
  • Why, at least, was not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat?†   (source)
  • …he was still only half awakened to his trouble,—Maggie had felt the strong tide of pitying love almost as an inspiration, a new power, that would make the most difficult life easy for his sake; but now, instead of childlike dependence, there had come a taciturn, hard concentration of purpose, in strange contrast with his old vehement communicativeness and high spirit; and this lasted from day to day, and from week to week, the dull eye never brightening with any eagerness or any joy.†   (source)
  • In 1813 the cowardly breach of silence of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe, possessed only traits which aroused indignation.†   (source)
  • The three Icelanders, just as taciturn as their comrade the hunted, never spoke, and ate their breakfasts in silence.†   (source)
  • One of the Frenchmen, with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen, addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter had probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.†   (source)
  • "Ah!" said Gringoire, " 'tis because his father and mother were fantastic people who made him of a taciturn temperament."†   (source)
  • He was taciturn, soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, always at hand when wanted, and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to consideration was his respectability.†   (source)
  • Externally, Grigory was cold, dignified and taciturn, and spoke, weighing his words, without frivolity.†   (source)
  • We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.†   (source)
  • There she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap.†   (source)
  • Many people attribute these singular anti-social propensities, and the reserved and taciturn bearing of the English, to purely physical causes.†   (source)
  • He accustomed himself to speaking to the new jailer, although the latter was, if possible, more taciturn than the old one; but still, to speak to a man, even though mute, was something.†   (source)
  • The other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling for him; but there had long existed a taciturn understanding between them that both were weighed down by work, and always in a hurry.†   (source)
  • Seeing her so taciturn, Charles imagined her much affected, and forced himself to say nothing, not to reawaken this sorrow which moved him.†   (source)
  • She then added,—"This young madcap is, however, very nearly right, and merely re-echoes what he has heard me say with pain a hundred times; for Mademoiselle de Villefort is, in spite of all we can do to rouse her, of a melancholy disposition and taciturn habit, which frequently injure the effect of her beauty.†   (source)
  • By the diversity of her humour, in turn mystical or mirthful, talkative, taciturn, passionate, careless, she awakened in him a thousand desires, called up instincts or memories.†   (source)
  • He kept apart from his fellow-travellers, knowing Mr. Fogg's taciturn tastes; besides, he did not quite like to talk to the man whose favours he had accepted.†   (source)
  • The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokolniki, and sat in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.†   (source)
  • Barthelemy, thin, feeble, pale, taciturn, was a sort of tragic street urchin, who, having had his ears boxed by a policeman, lay in wait for him, and killed him, and at seventeen was sent to the galleys.†   (source)
  • Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's.†   (source)
  • He had applied himself to riddling out the significance of the different peals, and he had succeeded, so that this taciturn and enigmatical cloister possessed no secrets for him; the sphinx babbled all her secrets in his ear.†   (source)
  • All alike were taciturn and morose.†   (source)
  • Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first day, he was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became morosely dumb and retired to his apartments directly after dinner.†   (source)
  • The cavities of night, things grown haggard, taciturn profiles which vanish when one advances, obscure dishevelments, irritated tufts, livid pools, the lugubrious reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown but possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches, alarming torsos of trees, long handfuls of quivering plants,— against all this one has no protection.†   (source)
  • …very strictly to social distinctions and rarely admitted even important government officials to his table, had unexpectedly selected Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals, and had more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not a whit worse than you or I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.†   (source)
  • …and from the constellation of Auriga some years after the birth and death of Rudolph Bloom, junior, and in and from other constellations some years before or after the birth or death of other persons: the attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings.†   (source)
  • Can nothing melt thee, Or shake thy dogged taciturnity?†   (source)
  • And then, what shall we say of Gasabal, the squire of Galaor, who was so silent that in order to indicate to us the greatness of his marvellous taciturnity his name is only once mentioned in the whole of that history, as long as it is truthful?†   (source)
  • He was a good-natured worthy man; but chiefly remarkable for his great taciturnity at table, though his mouth was never shut at it.†   (source)
  • At length, Jones, being weary of soliloquy, addressed himself to his companion, and blamed him for his taciturnity; for which the poor man very honestly accounted, from his fear of giving offence.†   (source)
  • "O yes," replied the old man: "the Turks were much more tolerable to me than the Christians; for they are men of profound taciturnity, and never disturb a stranger with questions.†   (source)
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