Reticent means keeping your thoughts and feelings to yourself. Reticent about it, notably reticent, reticent by nature.
It is about what somebody will say rather than how much they talk, which is the difference from shy or quiet. It nearly always takes about, and it is often a polite way of noting that somebody is holding back.
1adjectivereticentKeeping your thoughts and feelings to yourself.
“He was reticent about his time in the army and never talked about the war.”
reticent is a quality.
Latin reticens comes from reticere, to keep silent, from re- plus tacere, to be silent.
Proto-Indo-European
*te(H)k-
Latin
reticēns
English, today
reticent
Built from
Latin reticēns, present participle of reticeō (“to keep silence”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA