Word.ws English Dictionary

closemouthed

closemouthed adjective: reticent, secretive or uncommunicative.

Adjective

closemouthed (comparative more closemouthed, superlative most closemouthed)

  1. reticent, secretive or uncommunicative
    • As much so as possible; they have hardly a way that you would like, my dear ma'am; and are as closemouthed as if they were afraid of committing themselves.1852, James Fenimore Cooper, Home as found
    • Instructors were notoriously closemouthed about their gunnery techniques.2001, C. R. Anderegg, Sierra Hotel: flying Air Force fighters in the decade after Vietnam

Forms of closemouthed

comparativemore closemouthed
superlativemost closemouthed

Origin of closemouthed

From close + mouthed.

Questions about closemouthed

What does closemouthed mean?
Closemouthed means reticent, secretive or uncommunicative.
What part of speech is closemouthed?
Closemouthed is an adjective.

Words near closemouthed in the dictionary

  1. closely held
  2. closeminded
  3. closemindedly
  4. closemindedness
  5. closemouth
  6. closemouthed
  7. closemouths
  8. closen
  9. closened
  10. closeness
  11. closenesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: closemouthed (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “closemouthed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/closemouthed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.