What's the difference between insouciant and taciturn?

Insouciant


Definition:

  • (a.) Careless; heedless; indifferent; unconcerned.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For every drop shot that was loose, lazy and tossed away a point, there was another that smacked of insouciant brilliance.
  • (2) In the Russian gallery, for example, the courageous Vadim Zakharov presents a pointed version of the Danaë myth in which an insouciant dictator (of whom it is hard not to think: Putin) sits on a high beam on a saddle, shelling nuts all day while gold coins rain down from a vast shower-head only to be hoisted in buckets by faceless thuggish men in suits.
  • (3) While deplorable and to a degree self-defeating, this insouciant defiance also makes a grim kind of sense, both historically and reinforced by recent events.
  • (4) Equally popular was the stylish Borsalino, starring Belmondo and Alain Delon as insouciant gangsters in 1930s Marseilles.
  • (5) At the same time, it is important for our enjoyment of Bake Off that the insouciance does not go all the way (the inquisitive camera, for example, captures Ian’s set jaw, betraying his iron will).
  • (6) The minutes of the policy convention show DSD representatives insouciant about sharing metadata on Australians – so long as it had been hoovered up “unintentionally” they were happy to store and to disclose it without obtaining a warrant.
  • (7) But Putin appeared insouciant in the face of the western manoeuvres.
  • (8) It would defy every norm that is America.” Candidates were not only insouciant about human rights abroad; they also felt comfortable doubting rights enshrined by US law.
  • (9) DeepMind is excited to have joined forces with Google,” it says, with an unapologetic insouciance not normally seen with the search giant’s other acquisitions.
  • (10) No one assumes that New Zealand will have an impact in South Africa, yet insouciance is an asset when other sides are so overwrought.
  • (11) I have such pale legs and they never burn!” I insouciantly declared to onlookers, a mere 12 hours before I began convulsing, shaking, sweating and finding myself unable to walk for three days.
  • (12) For this tale of a young waitress with an insouciant approach to haircuts, garden gnomes, and life, Craig Lucas supplies the book, Daniel Messé and Nathan Tyse the music and lyrics.
  • (13) Townsfolk were also displaying a distinct insouciance to pledges by green activists to hold a day of protest there and trash a field of GM crops at the town's Rothamsted research station.
  • (14) He was insouciant, dapper, elegant, somehow intensely English – though O'Toole himself was an Irishman and proud of it – and also outrageously sexy.
  • (15) It is a look that matches his backbench style: unflappable but not insouciant; with authority but no menace and, it once seemed, palpably relieved to be off the front line.
  • (16) The former chief secretary to the treasury and shadow everything produces her lanyard with dazzling insouciance and continues to fish-dance her way in.
  • (17) At the time I remember thinking about those pictures in terms of horror films, trying to imagine the context in which people might so casually abuse power and so insouciantly photograph their own crimes.
  • (18) In a display of Gallic insouciance, the French identified themselves as both the most arrogant and least arrogant.
  • (19) No rush, lads, you whistle an insouciant trill and scratch the old jacksie.
  • (20) Rooney plundered two goals in two minutes with almost insouciant ease and could have had a hat-trick before the hour came up, as the defensive solidity Liverpool had shown in the first half evaporated in front of the Stretford End.

Taciturn


Definition:

  • (a.) Habitually silent; not given to converse; not apt to talk or speak.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The letters have been published amid growing signs that Charles is planning to rule in a far more outspoken way than the taciturn Queen.
  • (2) Last autumn, however, his allies told a Guardian investigation into the shape of his future reign that he intends to continue to make “heartfelt interventions” in public life after he becomes sovereign, in contrast to the Queen’s taciturn discretion on public affairs.
  • (3) Inside the Hark to Bounty pub in the Lancashire village of Slaidburn, I found taciturn young gamekeepers, cheeks flushed red from a day outdoors, quietly discussing their shoot by the open fire.
  • (4) He may claim to be "like a kid in a candy shop when it comes to my job", but others see something far less fun – describing him as taciturn, quiet, serious and work-focused.
  • (5) More than 20 novels later Rendell explained why she kept returning to her taciturn detective.
  • (6) He revealed his taciturn coach Ivan Lendl had given him a hug later.
  • (7) I'll find myself sitting cross-legged next to a taciturn Swedish engineer, a heavily tattooed biker, or another migrant – there's a computer programmer from Chennai – as our children play with the wooden blocks, rattles and drums.
  • (8) In receiving the David Cohen Literature Prize for lifetime achievement in 1995, he spoke of the sheer pleasure that writing gave him: "I'm well aware that I have been described in some quarters as being 'enigmatic, taciturn, terse, prickly, explosive and forbidding.'
  • (9) In the few interviews he has given over the past 50 years, he has come across as sombre and taciturn.
  • (10) Regimented, taciturn, Orwellian images of China's 17th Communist party congress have drawn little comment.
  • (11) Normally taciturn and professorial, Zeidan threatened to attack the tanker and sink it if it tried to leave.
  • (12) The legendarily taciturn Ford, when asked how he was, simply said, “I’m fine”, and then, perhaps sensing that was not enough, thanked Hardwick for asking.
  • (13) It’s impossible to say.” Murray, who tamed his once fiery temper, particularly during his two years with the taciturn Ivan Lendl, has continually expressed satisfaction with the two-time slam champion Mauresmo since she replaced the Czech on a short-term basis a few weeks ago.
  • (14) The taciturn Pierrepoint never bragged about “the job”.
  • (15) The fast-talking Ali invariably delighted in using the more taciturn Frazier as his stooge.
  • (16) The narrator is the 16-year-old Frank Cauldhame, who lives with his taciturn father in an isolated house on the north-east coast of Scotland .
  • (17) His default utterance is a grunt – that's how he responds when Jessica Chastain's glamorous dancer Maggie swans into town and takes a shine to him – but in spite of his taciturn nature, you can feel the heat of Forrest's intelligence.
  • (18) Didn't the way that even the most taciturn stars always wanted to take him into their most private confidence seem at all strange to him at the time?
  • (19) Far from being the taciturn meathead that his films generally make him out to be, he barely lets up for the 45 minutes I spend with him.
  • (20) She was well until August 20, 1988, when she was noted to have become taciturn and absent-minded.