• IPA: /ˈɹɛtɪsənt/

reticent

1. Keeping one's thoughts and opinions to oneself; reserved or restrained.
   • 1856, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Result”, in English Traits, Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, →OCLC ↗:

     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.

   • 1870 April–September, Charles Dickens, chapter XXIII, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1870, →OCLC ↗:

     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.

   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC ↗:

     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.

   • 1915 August–September, John Buchan, chapter 3, in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published October 1915, →OCLC ↗:

     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.

2. (proscribed) Hesitant or not wanting to take some action; reluctant (usually followed by a verb in the infinitive).

• (sense 1) reserved, restrained, tight-lipped (See also Thesaurus:taciturn)
• (sense 2) reluctant, unwilling, disinclined, loath

• French: réticent, hésitant
• German: still, verschwiegen, zurückhaltend
• Italian: reticente
• Portuguese: reticente
• Russian: сде́ржанный
• Spanish: reticente

• German: zögerlich, zurückhaltend, unwillig