tactful
/ˈtæktfəl/
tactful adjective: possessing tact; able to deal with people in a sensitive manner.
Adjective
tactful (comparative more tactful, superlative most tactful)
- Possessing tact; able to deal with people in a sensitive manner.
- His exhortations to his assistants to waste no time in getting on with the job, and to be tactful and courteous with those outside the railway service with whom they had to deal, are as apposite today as they were a century ago.1958 August, “More Light on Brunel”, in Railway Magazine, page 516
- I once found myself listening to a gay man who was saying wistfully, "I wish there was someplace you could go, maybe a club, where only masculine men would be allowed in." […] Ever tactful, I did not point out to him that if such a place existed, he probably would not be allowed into it.1984 December 29, Duncan Mitchel, “The Cult of Gay Machismo”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 25, page 9
- Antonyms:
- tactless
tactful meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Persian
tactful in Tamil
- நயமுடன், சாமர்த்தியமாக
tactful in Urdu
- ہوشیار, موقع شناس, سلیقہ مند
tactful in Malayalam
- discreet, diplomatic, considerate
- നയമുള്ള, നയജ്ഞ, നയതന്ത്രജ്ഞതയുള്ള, നയകോവിദ, സുനയ, നയചാതുര്യമുള്ള
tactful in Persian
- possessing tact
- سنجیده, با ظرافت
More languagesFewer languages
- tactful in Vietnamese
- khôn khéo
Examples of tactful in a sentence
- He can be very touchy when you talk about his estranged son, so be as tactful as possible.
- It’s true that I asked my opa some less than tactful questions on that visit.
- You don't really think the Creams will maintain a tactful reserve?
Antonyms of tactful
Forms of tactful
| comparative | more tactful |
|---|---|
| superlative | most tactful |
Origin of tactful
From tact + -ful.
Words formed from tactful
Questions about tactful
- What does tactful mean?
- Tactful means possessing tact; able to deal with people in a sensitive manner.
- What is tactful in Tamil?
- Tactful in Tamil is நயமுடன், சாமர்த்தியமாக. See Tactful meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is tactful?
- Tactful is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce tactful?
- Tactful is pronounced /ˈtæktfəl/.
Words near tactful in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tactful (page history and authors); tactful (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tactful (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tactful (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tactful.wav.
Cite this entry: “tactful.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tactful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.