Word.ws English Dictionary

tight-lipped

tight-lipped adjective: having the lips pressed tightly together, hence, not speaking.

Adjective

tight-lipped (comparative more tight-lipped, superlative most tight-lipped)

  1. (literal) Having the lips pressed tightly together, hence, not speaking.
    • He would have sprung upon Captain Blood, who stood aloof, alert, tight-lipped, and watchful.1922, Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood: His Odyssy, chapter XXV
    • Gaining the dak, they were joined on the veranda by four tight-lipped men.1936, F.J. Thwaites, chapter XV, in The Redemption, Sydney: H. John Edwards, published 1940, page 162
  2. (idiomatic) Unwilling to divulge information.
    • The open access operator has remained tight-lipped over what may have caused the driver to suddenly apply the brake, but stressed that safety was its priority.2022 May 4, “Network News: RAIB looking into emergency brake application of train at Peterborough”, in RAIL, number 956, page 12

tight-lipped meaning in Bengali and Malayalam

tight-lipped in Bengali

তাই কথা না বলা, তথ্য প্রকাশ করতে অনিচ্ছুক

tight-lipped in Malayalam

unforthcoming, uncommunicative, reticent
മൗനമുദ്രിതമായ, മൗനം ദീക്ഷിക്കുന്ന, മിണ്ടാട്ടം കുറഞ്ഞ, മൗനശീലനായ, അല്പഭാഷിയായ, വായ് തുറക്കാത്ത

Synonyms of tight-lipped

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of tight-lipped

Forms of tight-lipped

comparativemore tight-lipped
superlativemost tight-lipped
alternative formtightlipped

Origin of tight-lipped

From tight + lipped.

Words formed from tight-lipped

Questions about tight-lipped

What does tight-lipped mean?
Tight-lipped means having the lips pressed tightly together, hence, not speaking.
What is tight-lipped in Bengali?
Tight-lipped in Bengali is তাই কথা না বলা, তথ্য প্রকাশ করতে অনিচ্ছুক. See Tight-lipped meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is tight-lipped?
Tight-lipped is an adjective.

Words near tight-lipped in the dictionary

  1. tight-fitting
  2. tight-head
  3. tight-heads
  4. tight-knit
  5. tight-laced
  6. tight-lipped
  7. tight-lippedness
  8. tight-rope
  9. tight-rope walking
  10. tight-rope-walk
  11. tight-rope-walked

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tight-lipped (page history and authors); tight-lipped (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tight-lipped (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-tight-lipped.ogg.

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