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Tacit   Listen
adjective
Tacit  adj.  Done or made in silence; implied, but not expressed; silent; as, tacit consent is consent by silence, or by not interposing an objection. "The tacit and secret theft of abusing our brother in civil contracts."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tacit" Quotes from Famous Books



... the danger of his* own life from the menaces of the sovereign.[*] In the second year, they insisted on maintaining the practice of not granting any supply before they received an answer to their petitions, which was a tacit manner of bargaining with the prince.[**] In the fifth year, they desired the king to remove from his household four persons who had displeased them, among whom was his own confessor, and Henry, though he told them that he knew of no offence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... and small jests of Cripple Corner were not destined to have a long life. Underlying them from the first was a serious matter, which every member of the patriarchal family knew of, but which, by tacit agreement, all forbore to speak of. Mr. Wilding's health ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... said at the Quenu-Gradelles' about all the rumours which circulated. There was a tacit understanding amongst the staff of the pork shop to keep silent respecting them in the presence of Quenu. The latter, somewhat saddened by the falling-out between his brother and his wife, sought consolation in stringing his sausages and ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... reply, and as if by tacit agreement they started back along the path. He did not break the silence, feeling that words might be provocative of a retort that would dispel the growing feeling ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... morning, Fanny Mere had asked for leave to go out. For some time past this request had been so frequently granted, with such poor results so far as the maid's own designs were concerned, that Lady Harry decided on administering a tacit reproof, by means of a refusal. Fanny made no attempt at remonstrance; she ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... worth while. I have aimed here at no literary production, but simply at a collection of facts that may reach the heart. "We sing," said a soldier from Baden, "to the accompaniment of the piano—especially during the interval for dinner. We have indeed entered into a tacit agreement with the French to stop all fire between 12 and 1 o'clock, so that they and we might not be disturbed when we feed." (Zeitung am Mittag, as quoted in the Daily Chronicle, November 10, 1914.) "One of our teachers, a lieutenant in the R.F.A., who has been out most of the time, ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... but we had had so many little differences of opinion upon this head that by a tacit understanding the subject was seldom referred to between us, and I did not know that he was actually publishing till one day he brought me a book and told me flat it was his own. I opened it and found it ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... or civil, to be jocund in this way with those who desire to be serious, and like not the humour. Jocularity should not be forcibly obtruded, but by a kindly conspiracy (or tacit compact) slip into conversation; consent and complaisance give all the life thereto. Its design is to sweeten and ease society; when to the contrary it breedeth offence or encumbrance, it is worse than vain and unprofitable. From these instances we may collect when in other like cases it is unseasonable, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... they prevail, after a while fatigue their adherents, without ever having convinced or refuted their opponents, and they fade out of existence not by being refuted in their turn, but simply by a tacit agreement to ignore their claims: so that the true insight they were based on is too often buried under them. The hypostasis of philosophical terms is an abuse incidental to the forthright, unchecked use of ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... rejoinder, "that that was very much the proper thing. Whether or not he comes here too often is not for me to say—I have no opinion on the subject. But, to do him justice, he is about the last man to wait for a tacit dismissal, or to cause you and Julius to depart from what he knows to be your regular habit out of politeness to him. He is a person of too much delicacy and good breeding to stay when—if—that is to say—" She turned again to the ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... news, and the very slight knowledge the elder female had of her partner in mystery. Then, more than a year afterwards, the acquaintanceship of her own father with this his first love; the awakening of the passion, his acts of devotion, the unreasoning heat of his rapture, her tacit acceptance of it, and yet her uneasiness under the delight. Then his declaration amid the evergreens: the utter change produced in her manner thereby, seemingly the result of a rigid determination: and the total concealment of her reason by herself and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... gave us the benefit of the doubt, leaving it open to further knowledge. Some of the things we had grown to accept as perfectly natural, or as belonging to our human limitations, they literally could not have believed; and, as I have said, we had all of us joined in a tacit endeavor to conceal much of the social status ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... his vision. Nevertheless, to the solitary distant thinker, shut in by the near horizon of political Springfield, there was every excuse for the error. The palpable evidence all confirmed it. What might have contradicted it was a cloud of witnesses, floating, incidental, casual, tacit. Just what a nature like Lincoln's, if only he could have met them, would have perceived and comprehended; what a nature like Douglas's, no matter how plainly they were presented to him, could neither perceive nor comprehend. It was the irony of fate that an opportunity to fathom ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... by tacit consent, joined Mrs. Hawley's party, and were so entertaining and attentive that they all congratulated themselves upon having secured so pleasant an addition ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... truth. Yet how let him see what she felt, and yet refuse what he offered? How confess to him what had been on her lips when he made the offer: "I've seen what it did to one man; and there must never, never be another"? The tacit ignoring of her past had been the element in which their friendship lived, and she could not suddenly, to him of all men, begin to talk of herself like a guilty woman in a play. Somehow, in the end, she had managed it, had averted a direct explanation, had made him understand that ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... centre of the town, was visited by all classes, including very many high officers of government, and even by the Seraskier himself, and there was no complaint against it. No one had been persecuted for a long time for professing the religion of the Bible, and Protestantism seemed to have gained a tacit toleration. ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... pretended to be in a great fright, as all were washing and dabbling in the water. I came away. A man said, "The Christian must not go to the well in the morning, but only in the evening." There seems to be a tacit understanding, that from day-break to a couple of hours afterwards, the women shall have possession of the well, for purification purposes, according to ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... hard and strong on this theme, not having a very good grip on it ourselves, I am afraid. We simply harangued each other on the idleness of tears at stations. Every one of us had something to say; and when we parted, it was with the tacit understanding that there was an Anti-Tear League formed—the boys were leaving on an early train ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... himself in many descriptions of pictures quite awake to the beauty manufactured by man, has in no way anticipated the modern discovery that nature is beautiful. To readers who have had enough of the pathetic fallacy, and of the second-rate novelist's local colour, Lucian's tacit assumption that there is nothing but man is refreshing. That he was a close enough observer of human nature, any one can satisfy himself by glancing at the Feast of Lapithae, the Dialogues of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... Allied Powers. On the strength of these good intentions one of the Allies was asked to advance a certain sum of money for military preparations, and the request was complied with. Italy was approached and treated as a trusty confidant, and a tacit arrangement was come to with her by which each of the two Latin States was expected to communicate with the other as soon as it should decide to take the field. In fine, it was understood that Roumania would join in at the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... became aware of a growing embarrassment and constraint between himself and his companion. So far, his and her intercourse had been easy and spontaneous, because superficial. Since that first interview on the terrace a tacit agreement had existed to avoid the personal note. Now, for cause unknown, that intercourse threatened entering upon a new phase. It was as though the concentration, the tension, which he observed in her, and of which he was sensible in himself, must of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... dispersion of the little party at Baden-Baden he had not devoted much meditation to this conscientious gentlewoman who had been so tenderly anxious to establish her daughter properly in life; but there had been in his mind a tacit assumption that if Angela deemed that he had played her a trick Mrs. Vivian's view of his conduct was not more charitable. He felt that he must have seemed to her very unkind, and that in so far as a well-regulated conscience permitted the exercise ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... corruption that has crept into the Church, for every blot that defiles the purity of the Creed. They are not Christians, and they never have been, for they cannot be what they are and followers of Christ at the same time. They and the wealthy clergy of all the churches are responsible for the unfaith, tacit and avowed, of what we are pleased to call the lower classes; the classes who compose the majority of Christ's Congregation; and they are responsible for all the cynicism of the open and active ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... though experience most abundantly demonstrates the difficulties of maintaining the supplies of the Infantry in spite of the fact that, as a rule, their columns can cover the ground faster than the men can march, there appears to be a tacit assumption that with the Cavalry the trains will always arrive in time, although they move far slower than the troops they ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... assented tacitly to the proposition which Mrs. Penniman had tacitly laid down, that it was of importance that the poor motherless girl should have a brilliant woman near her. His assent could only be tacit, for he had never been dazzled by his sister's intellectual lustre. Save when he fell in love with Catherine Harrington, he had never been dazzled, indeed, by any feminine characteristics whatever; and though he was to a certain extent what is called a ladies' doctor, his private ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... a moment. She knew he wanted a tacit admission that their acquaintance need not end with her visit to Hazlehurst, but he would be right in attaching some significance to her action if she made it. The man, who had only known her a few weeks, could go no further yet, and he was eminently likeable, but she ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... him more. She had spoken with him once or twice, but only in his official capacity as inspector. She thought he seemed to acknowledge some kinship between her and him, a natural, tacit understanding, a using of the same language. But there had been no time for the understanding to develop. And something kept her from him, as well as attracted her to him. There was a certain hostility, a hidden ultimate reserve in ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... a stranger finds, however, lodging in the minds of few present-day thinkers. On the contrary, such an outcome is usually dismissed summarily. Most persons have accepted that tacit but clear modern philosophy which assigns to the white race alone the hegemony of the world and assumes that other races, and particularly the Negro race, will either be content to serve the interests of the whites or die out before their all-conquering march. This philosophy is the child of the ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... bedrooms, our children came to use them during the Christmas holidays, and we had some pleasant meetings with M. Pelletier and his family. It was by a sort of tacit understanding that almost every Sunday we lunched, in turn, at each other's houses,—once at Clematis, then at Madame Halliard's, and afterwards at M. Pelletier's. After lunch we had a long walk either in the Bois de Boulogne, Parc de St. Cloud, Jardin du Luxembourg, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... everyone; but to anybody he disliked his politeness was simply deadly. Of course he took no notice of the young parson's tacit insolence; he only longed, as fervently as he knew how to long, for an opportunity of being polite to him. And the occasion was soon forthcoming. The conversation growing more general by degrees, a reference was made by the vicar, in passing, to a certain clergyman ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... deputed to break the project to the duke, and obtain his consent at some propitious moment. Thinking he had him one day in a most accommodating temper, he cautiously hinted the scheme, and gradually waxed bolder, and disclosed all particulars, as the duke seemed to listen with tacit approval. "Well, well," answered the duke, carelessly, "all my servants are alike to me. You may dine at one table, or at twenty, if you can so arrange it. But whatever the number"—here his voice rose ominously, and his eye flashed with anger—"you, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... decade. President Ange-Felix PATASSE's civilian government was plagued by unrest, and in March 2003 he was deposed in a military coup led by General Francois BOZIZE, who has since established a transitional government. Though the government has the tacit support of civil society groups and the main parties, a wide field of affiliated and independent candidates will contest the municipal, legislative, and presidential elections scheduled for February 2005. The government still ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... "Therefore while, with my tacit consent, you went to work in your own way, I sent my messenger to Rome bearing to the Holy Father a full account of all, petitioning a dispensation from vows taken owing to deception, and asking leave to unite in the holy sacrament of marriage these long-sundered lovers, undertaking ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... never being defeated; he is only half a merchant. I, in your position, would never have continued in business. What! be forced to blush before the men I had injured, to bear their suspicious looks and tacit reproaches? I can conceive of the guillotine—a moment, and all is over. But to have the head replaced, and daily cut off anew,—that is agony I could not have borne. Many men take up their business as if nothing had happened: so much the better for them; they are stronger than ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... in the old village to claim the sweetheart he had left behind. In the course of time new arrivals brought the news that Francisco was married and that they were living happily, as a young couple should. At the news Mulberry Street looked askance at Carmen; but she gave no sign. By tacit consent, she was the Widow Carmen ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... nunc in Germania: nisi hoc dixerimus, quod bracht, vel brecht, milites Germani appellare consueverunt; concursum videlicet certantium, et clamorem ad pugnam descendentium; quem bar, bar, bar, sonuisse nonnulli affirmant."—(Andr. Althameri, Schol. in C. Tacit De Germanis.) Ritter, himself a German, affirms that baritus is a reading worth nothing; and that barritus was not the name of the ancient German war-song, but of the shout raised by the Romans in later ages when on the point of engaging; ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... She surrendered, not absolutely and permanently, but temporarily and conditionally until such time as the facts could be considered by the United States. Furthermore, the Provisional Government acquiesced in her surrender in that manner and on those terms, not only by tacit consent, but through the positive acts of some members of that Government, who urged her peaceable submission, not merely to avoid bloodshed, but because she could place implicit reliance upon the justice of the United ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... magnanimously to be convinced that she has mistaken the North; that she has not the grievances to complain of which she supposes she has, and that she can yet obtain just and equitable treatment from us. There is a tacit assumption in the minds of men that she must be content to receive the usage at our hands which we are conscious that we are ready to bestow, and which has in it no touch of aggressive and unjust intention. It is not realized that the spirit of the South, in respect to the North, in ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... was her escort. He called upon her two or three times each week. At his studio entertainments Laura was always present. How—Corthell asked himself—did she regard the affair? She gave him no sign; she never intimated that his presence was otherwise than agreeable. Was this tacit acquiescence of hers an encouragement? Was she willing to afficher herself, as a married woman, with a cavalier? Her married life was intolerable, he was sure of that; her husband uncongenial. He told ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... that you would find that he came off rather better than you expected from most of his difficulties. But then, of course, as. I said, you know him so much better than we do." Her easy indifference was a tacit dismissal ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... disturbed and worried," she said, in a tone that implied a complete understanding of his mood, and a tacit acceptance of the things that he would say if it were ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... a much greater one, especially if it were committed with the tacit sanction of the three greatest Powers in Europe," replied K. of K., quietly. "That is one of our chief reasons for asking for the surrender of the Flying Fishes. There is no telling what harm this wild Irishman ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... young sir?" required only a tacit answer when it was accompanied by a presentation of the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... which one feels the impulse to enter a tacit protest against too gross an appetite for pure aesthetics in this starving and sinning world. One turns half away, musingly, from certain beautiful useless things. But the healthier state of mind surely ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... Senators—objected that the Committee had failed of its duty; they had proved this man Noble guilty of nothing, they had meted out no punishment to him; if the report were accepted, he would go forth free and scathless, glorying in his crime, and it would be a tacit admission that any blackguard could insult the Senate of the United States and conspire against the sacred reputation of its members with impunity; the Senate owed it to the upholding of its ancient dignity to make an example of this man Noble —he ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... certain things to a man of Ringfield's calibre? To another, a glance, a smile, the inflection of a word, of a syllable, and all would be clear. How was she to frame an explanation which should receive his tacit and grave but unenlightened approval? How far he could conjecture, disassociate, dissect, limit and analyse, weigh and deduct, the various progresses in a crude amalgamation people call Love, she did not know, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... out unexpectedly bad-tempered. And it was hot enough, even in the forest shades, which we kept to as much as possible, to have excused some amount of irritability. But we were all sound and strong, and had entered into a tacit compact of making the best of things and enjoying ourselves as much as we could. Nora and Reggie perhaps, by the end of the second day, began to have doubts as to the delights of indefinitely continued walking excursions; and though ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth

... which she had started; and to lose her place, she knew, would mean either starvation or beggary. There was no one, with the exception of Cousin Jimmy, of whom she could beg, and to beg of him would be a tacit confession that she had failed as a breadwinner. In Mrs. Carr's last letter Charley had appeared in a new light as a reformed character, a devoted attendant at church, and an enthusiastic convert to the prohibition party; and Gabriella ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... towards their superiors, this one, that they are bound to obey their commands, stands out as special among the rest. Wherefore obedience is a special virtue, and its specific object is a command tacit or express, because the superior's will, however it become known, is a tacit precept, and a man's obedience seems to be all the more prompt, forasmuch as by obeying he forestalls the express command as soon as he understands his ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... interest question; the fact, that, in his account of the matter of liquidation he mentions the enactment as to the surrender of the property of the debtor in lieu of payment but is silent as to the cancelling of the interest, is perhaps a tacit self-reproach. But he was, like every party-leader, dependent on his party and could not directly repudiate the traditional maxims of the democracy in the question of interest; the more especially when he had to decide this question, not as the all-powerful conqueror of Pharsalus, but even before ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... bore their sly attacks and friendly humours, which affected her far otherwise than they supposed. In the tacit agreement of husband and wife to keep their estrangement a secret they behaved as would have been ordinary. And then, although she would rather there had been no word spoken on the subject, Tess had to hear in detail ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... and that his decrees and decisions in that capacity are to be respected as rules of faith, when they are dogmatical, or confined to doctrinal points of faith and morals. Others," the Archbishop goes on to explain, "deny this, and require the expressed or tacit acquiescence of the Church assembled or dispersed, to stamp infallibility on his dogmatic decrees." Then he concludes:—"Until the Church shall decide upon this question of the Schools, either opinion may be adopted by individual Catholics, without any breach ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... and perpetual acquiescence induces half-deception. It is, perhaps, more correct to say that the word deception has no particular meaning for them, and implies a standard which is altogether inapplicable. There is a tacit agreement through all society to say things which nobody believes, and that being the constitution under which we live, it is absurd to talk of truth or falsity in the strict sense of the terms. A thing is true when it is in accordance with the system and on a level with ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... effort made in the army. I thought it significant that in many of the speeches the importance of this effort was urged as the only possible means of retaining the support of the peasants. There was a tacit recognition that the Conference represented town workers only. Larin, who had belonged to the old school which had grown up with its eyes on the industrial countries of the West and believed that revolution could ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... of his Prussian allies, halted his troops upon the other side of the Vistula, and from his vast realms collected recruits. For a few weeks the storms of winter secured a tacit armistice. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... false only when it is referred to an object, whether this be the existence of a thing, or its true essence, or an idea of other things. Truth and error belong always to affirmations or negations, that is, to (it may be, tacit) propositions. Ideas uncombined, unrelated, apart from judgments, ideas, that is, as mere phenomena in the mind, are neither true ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... he exercised in the case of customers extended to his communion with Vona during the slack times of the business day. There seemed to be a tacit agreement between them to keep off the topic of what had happened the night before. Words could not have added to their understanding of their mutual feelings. That understanding had established for them the policy of waiting. Though Frank said but little to the girl about his talk ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... [Patent given him "3d October, 1744," only a week ago, "and ordered to be dated eight months back" (Rodenbeck, i. 109).] a man who has had promotion, and also has had none, and may again come to have none;—and is able to do either way. Never mind, my excellent tacit friend! Ziethen is five-and-forty gone; has a face which is beautiful to me, though one of the coarsest. Face thrice-honest, intricately ploughed with thoughts which are well kept silent (the thoughts, indeed, being themselves mostly inarticulate; thoughts ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... houses; when two persons met in this path they stood still, for neither liked to take the first step on one side into the deep snow to let the other pass him. There they stood silent and motionless, till at last, as if by tacit consent, they each sacrificed a leg and buried it in the deep snow. Towards evening, the weather became calm. The sky, cleared from the snow, looked more lofty and transparent, while the stars shone with new brightness and purity. The frozen snow ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... invariably rises at his entrance, and offers him her seat! He pretends not to see it, and runs to get one for her! Then she takes comfort in seeing him consume her good things, since his gobbling them down is a sort of tacit tribute to their merits. ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... consequence of having no other arbiters to appeal to, than their judgments and tastes. On the present occasion, he would have abstained from betraying a feverish haste by a too speedy return, since it would have contained a tacit admission that the time asked for was more than had been wanted; but, on the other hand, had the idea occurred to him, he would have quickened his movements a little, in order to avoid the dramatic appearance of returning at the precise instant set as the utmost limit of his absence. Still, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... over the church, although everybody in it was sure, before he had uttered a word, what that word ought to be. Indeed he had never denied it; but not to deny is different from bold affirmation. The prior, whose avowal had also been tacit, looked pained: avowals are painful things. The bishop, more used to avowals, did his best to look shocked; the archdeacon (professionally enough) thought avowal the most indecent part of an indecent business. The ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... confederacy certainly involved something very like a tacit assumption of sovereignty on the part of the four colonies. It is worthy of note that they did not take the trouble to ask the permission of the home government in advance. They did as they pleased, and then defended ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... becomes of peculiar importance in great industrial states like England, the United States, and Germany, because in such states a tacit conspiracy tends to grow up to subordinate national ends to individual ends, and practically to work for the deterioration of the race. In England, for instance, this tendency has become peculiarly well marked with disastrous results. The interest ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... swimmingly. There was a tacit and tactical understanding all round that the two would stand up under a floral bell some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old Jerome's money in a state of high commotion. But at this point ...
— Options • O. Henry

... contrary to his convictions. Now that he found himself the owner of vast estates, he was confronted by two alternatives: either to waive his ownership in favor of the peasants, as he did ten years ago with the two hundred acres, or, by tacit acquiescence, confess that all his former ideas were erroneous ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... harshly on my distempered ear, "were all my conjectures that she was unhappy, and that, in the trustful and earnest expression of those deep blue eyes, I could read the evidence of a secret grief, and a tacit appeal for sympathy to those whom her instinct taught her were worthy of her trust and confidence! Ah! well, I was young and foolish then (it was not quite a year and a half ago), and imagination found an easy dupe in me; ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... from work. He soars through life on a cushioned seat, with shock absorbers to alleviate all the bumps. No wonder we trust in money! We worship the golden calf far more than ever did the Israelites beneath the crags of Sinai. The real Money Trust is the tacit conspiracy by which those who have the money endeavor to hang on to it and keep it among themselves. Neither at the present time do great fortunes tend to ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... something more—a real danger. In addition, she knew how he was affected towards the man she had aided to escape—that he held Don Florencio in highest esteem; looked upon him as a dear friend, and in a certain tacit way had long ago signified approval of him for a son-in-law. All these thoughts passed through Luisa Valverde's mind while approaching her father, and steeling herself to make confession of that secret she might otherwise have kept ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... We are a particularly shy and reserved people, and set about nothing so awkwardly as the simple art of getting really acquainted with each other. We meet over and over again in what is conventionally called "easy society," with the tacit understanding to go so far and no farther; to be as polite as we ought to be, and as intellectual as we can; but mutually and honourably to forbear lifting those veils which each spreads over his inner sentiments ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... that implied a tacit memorandum and reflection, a subdued, withheld, occult little smile. Again, I am not sure it had n't its ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... was to lie still in tacit disdain. The recollection of Germain, however, crossed her mind. Rather submit to anything than exasperate his enemies; so she rose, with an ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... the pleasure of my explicit assent; my tacit assent he must have read in my smile. "Yes," I said, "and they're always so tolerant and compassionate. I don't want to say anything against the reverend clergy; they're oftener saints upon earth than we allow; but a doctor is more solid comfort; he ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... not, in the end, to seek happiness in the same way, by the same means? And still they crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is the tacit one, that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellant ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... advanced, announced that another German victory had been gained in the capture of Hill 60. Sir John French also sent out a message, but in his report he set forth that Hill 60 was held by the British. Because there had been similar conflict in official reports all too frequently, it seemed as if a tacit agreement was made among the neutrals to determine who was telling the truth. This resulted in making what was a comparatively unimportant engagement one of the most celebrated battles of the war. As soon as Duke Albrecht of Wuerttemberg discovered his mistake ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... with the subject of the numbers of the people we notice his tacit assumption—that Moses records everything necessary for a statistical table—in his criticisms on the numbers of the Danites and Levites, Chapters XVIII. and XVI.; and on Judah's family, Chapter II. He takes it for granted that because the Exodus took place in the lifetime of the fourth ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... I think thy girlhood's watchers must Have took thy folded songs on trust, And felt them, as one feels the stir Of still lightnings in the hair, When conscious hush expects the cloud To speak the golden secret loud Which tacit air is privy to; Flasked in the grape the wine they knew, Ere thy poet-mouth was able For its first young starry babble. Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace? Yea, in this silent interspace, God sets His ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... as a Christian one. I would suggest as a possibility that the expectation of the Twilight of the Gods may have grown out of some ritual connected with the eclipse, such as is frequent among heathen races. Such ceremonies are a tacit acknowledgment of a doubt, and if they ever existed among the Scandinavians, the possibility, ever present to the savage mind, of a time when his efforts to help the light might be fruitless, and the darkness prove the stronger, would be the ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday

... peculiar interest since the dismemberment of Scotland, for Edward's power was such, that seldom had the peers and other great officers of that land refused the tacit acknowledgment of England's supremacy by their non-appearance. Even in that which was deemed the rebellion of Wallace, the highest families, even the competitors for the crown, and all the knights and vassals ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... rate, determined to ignore them, and Isobel, who was now in her way a finished woman of the world, though she did not forget, had come to a like conclusion. So their meeting was cordial enough, and for a while, not a very long while, they continued to live together in outward amity, with a tacit understanding that they should follow their respective ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... against you by legal evidence, not a mere rhetorical appeal, Sir William Wallace," added the regent, "else the sentence of the law must be passed on so tacit an acknowledgment ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... The girl nodded tacit acceptance of the trust, and consigned the stamps to a resting place alongside the crystal. And then, after a little, she ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... one night broke this tacit understanding of silence on the sad question which was becoming a crisis; he suddenly awoke, sprang up and sat down on the edge ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... means in his power to hide from them the perils and humiliations of the journey. Constrained, no doubt, by the presence of his rough colleague, Petion, if he did not openly avow the feeling of pity, admiration, and respect which had conquered him during the journey, he showed it in his actions, and a tacit treaty was concluded by looks. The royal family felt that amidst this wreck of all their hopes they had yet gained Barnave. All his subsequent conduct justified the confidence of the queen. Audacious, when opposed to tyranny, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... but she wanted Dion's advice on certain points. He gave it, wondering all the time why she consulted him after his neglect of her and of her son, after his failure to accept invitations and to fulfil pledges (or to stick to the understandings which were almost pledges), after the tacit refusals of Rosamund. Did it not show a strange persistence, even a certain lack of pride in her? Perhaps she heard the haunting questions which he did not utter, for she suddenly turned from the topic of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... point that Columbus was chiefly solicitous. Mercenary considerations had scarcely any weight in his mind. Glory had been the great object of his ambition, and he felt that, as long as he remained suspended from his employments, a tacit censure rested on his name. He expected, therefore, that the moment the sovereigns should be satisfied of the rectitude of his conduct, they would be eager to make him amends; that a restitution of his viceroyalty would immediately take place, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... there is an English Chapel, in which the congregation was numerous and splendid. The form of public worship used by the church of England is in Scotland legally practised in licensed chapels served by clergymen of English or Irish ordination, and by tacit connivance quietly permitted in separate congregations supplied with ministers by the successors of the bishops who were deprived at ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... the next day that though it might be boring to listen to her it was better to make her recite than to let her do nothing, so effectually did the presence of his sister and that of Lady Agnes, and even of Grace and Biddy, appear, by a strange tacit opposition, to deprive hers, ornamental as it was, of a reason. He had only to see them all together to perceive that she couldn't pass for having come to "meet" them—even her mother's insinuating gentility failed to put the occasion on that footing—and that she must therefore ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... Alexander and Francis fled eastwards into the night. Between them there was now a tacit understanding that the campaign was at an end. On that night Francis sent proposals for a truce; and in two days' time Napoleon agreed to an armistice (signed on December 6th) on condition that Francis would send ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... of Gerry." Which is true in a sense, as she does not think of the Gerry her daughter knows. And the partial untruth does not cross her mind—a tacit recognition of the powers of change. "I ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... might be taken off and that we should see how she looked without it. In that case her beauty should receive such praise as it deserves. I should never praise her unless simply dressed. If she only regards fine clothes as an aid to personal beauty, and as a tacit confession that she needs their aid, she will not be proud of her finery, she will be humbled by it; and if she hears some one say, "How pretty she is," when she is smarter than usual, she ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... interest of the wives of officials, and of Englishwomen in Egypt, and carried out a scheme which in itself was a wonderful example of what his interest and driving power could accomplish. These women whose help he enlisted could tell endless stories of the task he set them to do and his tacit refusal to listen to any difficulties that arose in carrying it out. A number of trained English nurses were despatched to Egypt and sent to different localities, where they gave training to a large number of native ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... barbarians were acquainted, and the only form of justice of which they could conceive; and then the question of origin assumes this form: how did equality afterwards disappear?)—or else these treaties and agreements were forced by the strong upon the weak, and in that case they are null; the tacit consent of posterity does not make them valid, and we live in a permanent ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... for such unworthy treatment. Philosophers have differed in all Ages; but the discreetest among them, have always differed as became Philosophers. Scurrility and Passion in a Controversy among Scholars, is just so much of nothing to the purpose; and, at best, a tacit confession of a ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... Vrain's light talk of her dead husband jarred on the feelings of Lucian, and in some displeasure he held his peace. In no wise abashed, Lydia feigned to take no notice of this tacit reproof, but chatted on about all and everything in the most frivolous manner. Not until they had entered the shop of Baxter & Co. did she ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... Mrs. Preston waved her hand vaguely toward the southern prairie. They began to walk more briskly, with a tacit purpose in their motion. When the wagon road forked, Mrs. Preston took the branch that led south out of the park. It opened into a high-banked macadamized avenue bordered by broken wooden sidewalks. The vast flat land began to design itself, as the sun faded out behind the irregular ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... first medical circles. The value of any approximate decision of the vegetarian question can hardly be overestimated. There are thousands of families of very moderate means who strain every nerve to feed their children upon beef and mutton,—and this with the tacit approval, or by the positive advice, of physicians in good repute. Can our children be brought up equally well upon potatoes and hasty-pudding? May the two or three hundred dollars thus annually saved be better spent in a trip to the country or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... again into his hands, unopened, the packet that was proffered, and assured him that no harm should befall Gideon Ward through complaint or report for which he was responsible, Parker still felt that somehow there was a balance due old Joshua Ward on their books of tacit partnership in well-doing;—such was the honest faith, and patient self-abnegation of the good old man, who had endured ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... safely gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence, and when life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude too openly; but thanks to Susy's vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford's tacit co-operation), the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over. Nelson Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though Ellie's, when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed to Susy ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... accomplished it. It is true there were many police restrictions on the roads and along the frontier; but the greater part of the agents were neither zealous nor particular in enforcing them. Their speech, their silence, and their looks, implied a kind of understood permission and tacit connivance. More than one official face appeared to say to the unknown traveller, "Pass on quickly," as if they dreaded making a mistake, or damaging a useful work by interfering with its supposed design. Having arrived at Ghent, I called first on the men I knew, and whose views corresponded ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... have?" She was up in arms in an instant against his breaking a long-standing treaty between them—a treaty not tacit, but ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield



Words linked to "Tacit" :   tacit consent, silent, inexplicit



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