Reticent vs Pithy - What's the difference?
reticent | pithy |
Keeping one's thoughts and opinions to oneself; reserved or restrained.
* 1856 , :
* 1870 , , ch XXIII:
* 1891 , , ch LIV:
* 1915 , , ch 3:
* 1922 , :
* 1922 , , ch XXV:
Concise and meaningful.
* 1825 , ,
* 1873 April 25, (editor), ''The Chemical News ,
* 1876 , ,
Of, like, or abounding in pith.
* 1863 , ,
* 1910 , , Suggestions and Reminders I: For the North, April,
* 1911 , ,
As adjectives the difference between reticent and pithy
is that reticent is reluctant; reticent while pithy is concise and meaningful.reticent
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- 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.
- But he was a reticent as well as an eccentric man; and he made no mention of a certain evening when he warmed his hands at the gatehouse fire, and looked steadily down upon a certain heap of torn and miry clothes upon the floor.
- She had told him she was not now at Marlott, but had been curiously reticent as to her actual address, and the only course was to go to Marlott and inquire for it.
- The milkman had been released, I read, and the true criminal, about whose identity the police were reticent , was believed to have got away from London by one of the northern lines.
- The inhabitants of that street impressed me peculiarly; At first I thought it was because they were all silent and reticent ; but later decided it was because they were all very old.
- But they were not reticent enough to prevent the circulation of certain uneasy rumours and extravagant stories of discreditable adventures.
Synonyms
* reserved, restrained, tight-lipped * See alsopithy
English
Adjective
(er)- Mr. Lamb, on the contrary, being "native to the manner here," though he too has borrowed from previous sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular and admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers.
- The following passage, which is exquisitely pithy and exquisitely modest, winds up the description:- "In this apparatus there is nothing new but its simplicity and thorough trustworthiness."
- IT was a pithy' saying that of Lorenzo de' Medici, and true as ' pithy , that we are enjoined to forgive our enemies, but nowhere are we told that we should forgive our friends.
- Must we know the torrid zone only through travelled bananas, plucked too soon and pithy ? or by bottled anacondas? or by the tarry-flavored slang of forecastle-bred paroquets?
- Parsnip .—Dig the roots before they grow and become soft and pithy .
- To summarize the characters of a true mushroom - it grows only in pastures; it is of small size, dry, and with unchangeable flesh; the cap has a frill; the gills are free from the stem, the spores brown-black or deep purple-black in colour, and the stem solid or slightly pithy .