English Reference
Adjective

tacit

adj.
C1 Advanced US /ˈtæsɪt/ UK /tˈæsɪt/ tac·it Logic

adj.understood without being said or written down. You use this to describe an agreement or a rule that people know exists even if they never talk about it.

adj.understood or implied without being explicitly stated. Often describes a form of agreement, knowledge, or social convention that exists by mutual understanding rather than by formal declaration.


SIMPLE

There is a tacit agreement that we will not talk about politics.

CONTEXTUAL

The two countries share a tacit understanding that they will not interfere in each other's internal affairs.

COMPLEX

The board of directors reached a tacit consensus on the new policy, even though no formal vote was ever recorded in the minutes.

Usage tacit knowledge

These are forms of tacit learning: knowledge that is difficult to codify and is often acquired through observation, experience and social interaction.

Phys.org· 1 Sept 2026

At the heart of Denning's argument is the idea of tacit knowledge, the vast amount of human understanding that cannot easily be put into words or represented in a form that computers can process.

ScienceDaily· 14 Jul 2026

Borrowed from late Middle French tacite, or from Latin tacitus (“that is passed over in silence, done without words, assumed as a matter of course, silent”), from tacere (“to be silent”).

Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This entry
Origin Latin tacitus
Level C1 · Advanced
Frequency Occasional
Updated