Tactful means saying a hard thing without hurting anybody. Choosing the words carefully, and choosing the moment too.
Tact is the skill of handling delicate situations, and it is as much about what you leave out as what you say. A tactful reply, a tactful silence, a tactful way of raising the subject. The word praises judgement rather than kindness alone, since blurting the truth out is honest but not tactful. Its opposite, tactless, describes somebody who says the true and terrible thing without noticing. Diplomatic is the near synonym.
1adjectivetactfulCareful not to cause offence when handling a difficult matter.
“He found a tactful way of telling her.”
Also accepted in games: diplomatic
Proto-Indo-European
*teh₂g-
Latin
tāctus — touched
French
tact
English
tact
English, today
tactful
Built from
From tact + ful. tact French tact, following a semantic shift from earlier tact (“sense of touch; feeling”), borrowed from Latin tāctus (“touched”). The borrowing was likely influenced by earlier tact (“sense of touch; feeling”), which was a parallel borrowing directly from the Latin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA