Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Not spoken.
  • adjective Implied by or inferred from actions or statements.
  • adjective Archaic Not speaking; silent.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Silent; quiescent; giving out no sound.
  • Silently indicated or implied; understood from conditions or circumstances; inferred or inferable; expressed otherwise than by speech; indirectly manifested or communicated; wordless.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Done or made in silence; implied, but not expressed; silent.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Done or made in silence; implied, but not expressed; silent; as, tacit consent is consent by silence, or by not interposing an objection.
  • adjective logic Not derived from formal principles of reasoning; based on induction rather than deduction.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective implied by or inferred from actions or statements

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin tacitus, silent, past participle of tacēre, to be silent.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin tacitus ("that is passed over in silence, done without words, assumed as a matter of course, silent"), from tacere ("to be silent").

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