uncommunicative
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of uncommunicative
First recorded in 1685–95; un- 1 + communicative
Explanation
Hello? Is anyone reading this? Please respond. Well, it seems that you’re uncommunicative, and you’re not willing to talk for whatever reason. How lonely. Someone who is uncommunicative has trouble communicating. Maybe they’re tired or grumpy, or maybe their cell phone battery died. The Latin adjective for "shared" is a root word, and no matter why, an uncommunicative person won’t share much, maybe only a few words, sometimes no words at all. You can also say that a book is uncommunicative if it’s very confusing and doesn’t make sense to you. Or you can just stop reading.
Vocabulary lists containing uncommunicative
100 SAT Words Beginning with "U"
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Words with 15 or More Letters, List 3
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“Oh, Hi!” writer-director Sophie Brooks and Gordon are longtime friends who found themselves both back in their parents’ houses during the early stages of the pandemic and commiserating on relationship troubles and uncommunicative exes.
From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 24, 2025
Analyzing the aquatically loquacious may also give us clues about whether midbrain injuries in humans may be linked to a person being mute or uncommunicative, according to Bass.
From Salon • Jan. 8, 2024
He suggested that this research may help us understand how a malfunctioning human midbrain may render a person uncommunicative or mute.
From Science Daily • Jan. 3, 2024
For a man who came from a culture that prizes conversation as a high art form, and has provided more than its fair share of hyper-articulate storytellers, he was famously uncommunicative with journalists and writers.
From BBC • Nov. 30, 2023
And they were little boys, therefore fundamentally uncommunicative, with no gift for intimacy, and worse, they had diluted their identities, for she had never found this missing triangle of flesh.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
