tact

Meanings

Noun

• The sense of touch; feeling.
• The stroke in beating time.
• Sensitive mental touch; special skill or faculty; keen perception or discernment; ready power of appreciating and doing what is required by circumstances; the ability to say the right thing.
• Short form of tactic
• A verbal operant which is controlled by a nonverbal stimulus (such as an object, event, or property of an object) and is maintained by nonspecific social reinforcement (praise).

Verb

• To use a tact (a kind of verbal operant; see noun sense).

Origin

• Borrowed from Latin tāctus. Sense “keen perception” developed in French tact.