tact
Pronunciation Noun

tact

  1. The sense of touch; feeling. [from 1650s]
    • Did you suppose that I could not make myself sensible to tact as well as sight?
    • Now, sight is a very refined tact.
  2. (music) The stroke in beating time.
  3. 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. [from early 19th c.]
    Synonyms: sensitivity, consideration, diplomacy, tactfulness
    • 18, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 11, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify ), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, OCLC 1069526323 ↗:
    • 18, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 11, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify ), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, OCLC 1069526323 ↗:
    By the use of tact, she was able to calm her jealous husband.
    I used tact when I told my fat uncle that his extra weight made him look better.
  4. (slang) Clipping of tactic#English|tactic.
    • 2006 "Block Party", Corner Gas
      Wanda "Hey, can you show us?"
      Karen "No"
      Brent "We promise not to make fun of you."
      Karen "No"
      Lacey "Okay, we promise TO make fun of you."
      Karen "I'm getting a drink"
      Lacey "I was trying a different tact."
      Wanda "Bad tack."
  5. (psychology) 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).
    • 2013, Jacob L. Gewirtz, William M. Kurtines, Jacob L. Lamb, Intersections With Attachment
      Skinner (1957) saw such tacts as responses that are reinforced socially.
Translations Verb

tact (tacts, present participle tacting; past and past participle tacted)

  1. (psychology) To use a tact (a kind of verbal operant; see noun sense).



This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003
Offline English dictionary