noncommittal

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See also: non-committal

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

non- +‎ committal

Pronunciation

Adjective

noncommittal (comparative more noncommittal, superlative most noncommittal)

  1. Tending to avoid commitment; lacking certainty or decisiveness; reluctant to give out information or show one's feelings or opinion.
    The Major's face was noncommittal.
    The noncommittal Indians would give no counsel as to fording.
    • 1818, S.R. Wells, The American Phrenonological Journal, and other miscellany, volume 10, page 234:
      [He] is candid, open-hearted, and hardly non-commmittal enough for his own interest at times.
    • 2016 June 22, Somini Sengupta, “Saudis Question U.N. Leader Over Report on Rights Violators”, in The New York Times‎:
      A United Nations spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, has previously said the organization would not divulge its sources of information, but welcomed any additional information from the coalition. The United Nations has been noncommittal on the Saudi proposal to send its experts to Riyadh.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

Noun

noncommittal (countable and uncountable, plural noncommittals)

  1. Failure to commit to a decision or course of action.
    • 1997, Dennis Sven Nordin, The New Deal's Black Congressman, page 42:
      As a result of cowardly noncommittals during the immediate postelection period, there was so much strain on several black-white Democratic relationships that they approached open ruptures.
  2. A voter etc. who has not yet committed to a decision.
    • 1981, Howard Rae Penniman, Canada at the Polls, 1979 and 1980, page 372:
      Where they occur, in the Liberal increases in Quebec and Ontario for instance, they are offset by declines in the number of undecideds or noncommittals.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 “non-committal, adj. and n.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary
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