tact

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The skill of dealing with people sensitively and saying the right thing without causing offence.

   It took a great deal of tact to tell her the bad news gently.

Borrowed from French tact, following a semantic shift from earlier tact (“sense of touch; feeling”), borrowed from Latin tāctus (“touched”). The borrowing was likely influenced by earlier English tact (“sense of touch; feeling”), which was a parallel borrowing directly from the Latin.

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