tact
pronunciation
How to pronounce tact in British English:
UK [tækt]
How to pronounce tact in American English:
US [tækt]
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- Noun:
- consideration in dealing with others and avoiding giving offence
Word Origin
- tact
- tact: [17] Tact originally denoted the ‘sense of touch’ (that is what Alexander Ross was referring to when he wrote ‘Of all the creatures, the sense of tact is most exquisite in man’, Arcana microcosmi 1651). But by the end of the 18th century it had evolved semantically via ‘refined faculty of perception’ to ‘skill in behaving or speaking with propriety or sensitivity’.It was acquired via French tact from Latin tactus ‘sense of touch’, a noun use of the past participle of tangere ‘touch’ (source of English contact, tangent, tangible, etc). Tactile [17], from the Latin derivative tactilis, preserves the original notion of ‘touching’.=> contact, contagion, tactile, tangent, tangible
- tact (n.)
- 1650s, "sense of touch or feeling" (with an isolated instance, tacþe from c. 1200), from Latin tactus "a touch, handling, sense of touch," from root of tangere "to touch" (see tangent (adj.)). Meaning "sense of discernment in action or conduct, diplomacy, fine intuitive mental perception" first recorded 1804, from development in French cognate tact. The Latin figurative sense was "influence, effect."
Antonym
Example
- 1. Are you hurting others by your lack of tact ?
- 2. It requires time , tact , and trust : 66 percent of the women we surveyed said they 're most willing to experiment later in a relationship .
- 3. The arguments between john maynard keynes and friedrich hayek in the 1930s , some of them published in academic journals , were not notable for their tact .
- 4. While a lot of debate has centered on the loud and droning noise of the vuvuzela , wu has the tact of a business person who knows where the sales are .
- 5. If they were describing the person 's physique , for example , along with his bearing , intelligence , and tact , they would assign high or low ratings across the board .