tact means sensitive mental touch; special skill or faculty; keen perception or discernment; ready power of appreciating and doing what is required by circumstances; the ability to say the right thing and avoid statements that will give offence or pain even if true. It carries an Arena rating of 1627, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, tact ranks #89 of 17,113 for Most Elegant Words, #363 of 17,123 for Most Malleable Words, #3,095 of 17,130 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #3,098 of 17,120 for Most Beautiful Words.
tact is pronounced /tækt/.
Why “tact” is a great word
The practiced art of navigating social situations with sensitive adroitness, avoiding giving offense. From the French tact, from the Latin tactus ("a touch, handling, sense of touch"), from tangere ("to touch"), first recorded in English c. 1650s. Unlike "diplomacy," which implies formal skill in managing negotiations between entities, or "savoir faire," which suggests a broad, instinctive worldly competence, tact is the more personal, minute calibration of speech and silence. It is the slight pause before answering a fraught question, the graceful redirection of a conversation skirting a bruise, the offering of a pertinent but unasked-for detail to spare another embarrassment—a quiet integrity of consideration that maintains the peace of a shared atmosphere.
Etymology
Borrowed from French tact, following a semantic shift from earlier tact (“sense of touch; feeling”), borrowed from Latin tāctus (“touched”). The borrowing was likely influenced by earlier English tact (“sense of touch; feeling”), which was a parallel borrowing directly from the Latin.
noun
- Sensitive mental touch; special skill or faculty; keen perception or discernment; ready power of appreciating and doing what is required by circumstances; the ability to say the right thing and avoid statements that will give offence or pain even if true.e.g.“By the use of tact, she was able to calm her jealous husband.”
- Propriety; manners (etiquette).
- The sense of touch; feeling.e.g.“Did you suppose that I could not make myself sensible to tact as well as sight?”
- The stroke in beating time.
- A verbal operant which is controlled by a nonverbal stimulus (such as an object, event, or property of an object) and is maintained by nonspecific social reinforcement (praise).e.g.“Skinner (1957) saw such tacts as responses that are reinforced socially.”
verb
- To use a tact (a kind of verbal operant).
Words closest in meaning
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