(n.) A state of not being committed or pledged; forbearance or refusal to commit one's self. Also used adjectively.
Example Sentences:
(1) He's more noncommittal, as a Muslim, about Obama's promises to open dialogue between Islamic leaders and America.
(2) I’m usually Labour” is an ominously noncommittal doorstep refrain: Jeremy Corbyn’s name often follows.
(3) Mention of the Lib Dems was met with noncommittal shrugs, as if you might just about bring yourself to back them, knowing it was little more than a futile protest vote.
(4) The author discusses the signs and symptoms appearing in the course of so called noncommittant squints.
(5) The chief executive, Ron Gourlay, has been publicly appreciative but noncommittal on Di Matteo's prospects, with the manager claiming still to be relaxed and focused on his immediate task as his contract ticks down towards expiry.
(6) Results of these analyses show that guidelines are too often formulated in a noncommittal way and that there is a need for a more functional registration system to link information about the clinical working diagnoses, the bacteria isolated and the sensitivity to the antibiotics used.
(7) Bassa was noncommittal about the offer, adding that it was still considering a "formal response", but said the proposals would be considered by shop stewards and ultimately by members.
(8) Andy Thornton, chief executive of the Citizenship Foundation, said: "So far responses from the Department for Education to our enquiries have been noncommittal and focus mainly on the coalition's proposals for a 'national citizens service'."
(9) Noncommittant squints are divided into squints caused by paresis or by a total paralysis of the motor muscles.
(10) This picture has all the traits of a well-rounded photograph: there are the jack rabbits on the fence, which make it look as if there is movement; the car that’s really dead, including the tumbleweed to one side and the beat-up old licence plate; the sky is totally noncommittal; the horizon is mute.
(11) She is, at first, similarly noncommittal about what she thinks of conversations around the burqa in the UK.
(12) Nomura analyst Rick Sherland had downgraded the company to a neutral – or noncommittal – stock recommendation on its disappointing stock performance.
(13) Two years into a five-year deal and recently appointed captain of Lazio, Biglia was noncommittal upon being asked if his promotion meant he would be staying at the club.
(14) But as a declaration of a military objective, it is slippery and noncommittal.
(15) Their Labour councillors refused to discuss the matter until after June 2004's council elections; when the council broke its silence, it was either noncommittal or brazenly enthusiastic about the Vardy proposal.
(16) The behaviour of these neoplasms has prompted the suggestion that these tumours be designated carcinomas rather that noncommittally tumours or neoplasms (Batsakis and Regezzi, 1977).
(17) Lamar McKay, the president of BP's US subsidiary, was also noncommittal about the plan during testimony before Congress earlier yesterday.
(18) Shortly after my first child was born, I attended a job interview where I responded to a casual question about my domestic circumstances with a revealingly noncommittal answer: "I live with my girlfriend – at the moment."
(19) And [the protagonists] were portrayed as Jews, so that was portrayed as a good thing?” I grunted noncommittally, which he took as a signal to move on to his critique of Django Unchained.
(20) For it, the author prefers the descriptive and diagnostically noncommittal acronym "BSAP".
Tenuous
Definition:
(a.) Thin; slender; small; minute.
(a.) Rare; subtile; not dense; -- said of fluids.
(a.) Lacking substance, as a tenuous argument.
Example Sentences:
(1) Diagnosis based on the character of the stridor alone is tenuous, and consideration of presentation other than the stridor is discussed in the management of these infants.
(2) Indian women are aware of our tenuous grip on our rights.
(3) Rising losses among the nearly 350,000-strong Afghan army and police, and a desertion rate of about 50,000 a year, also support Karzai's contention that control of large parts of the country remains tenuous.
(4) The results suggest that chronic sunlight exposure may be associated with an impediment to normal maturation of human dermal collagen resulting in tenuous amount of HHL.
(5) What the film does, though, is use these incidents to build an idiosyncratic but insightful picture of Lawrence, played indelibly by Peter O'Toole in his debut role: a complicated, egomaniacal and physically masochistic man, at once god-like and all too flawed, with a tenuous grip both on reality and on sanity.
(6) Because of disruption of the fasciocutaneous circulation, the perfusion of randomly based flaps is frequently tenuous.
(7) New employment data today suggested that hurricane Sandy is hurting already tenuous US job growth.
(8) Although extrapolation from animal studies may be tenuous, the present findings may explain the link between nutrition and the occurrence of alcoholic pancreatitis.
(9) If any of them is neglected or isolated from the rest, the whole will be impoverished-the student will suffocate in disconnected, empirical facts; fanciful theories will be spun from tenuous evidence; well established theory will be neglected by the practitioner; the best-intentioned schemes will have disastrous long-term consequences.
(10) However, circumstantial evidence is beginning to provide a tenuous link between smoking and the protease-antiprotease imbalance hypothesis.
(11) Though one possible mechanism for this reversal may include the inhibition of NAD-kinase by cAMP, there is evidence to suggest that such a direct cause-effect relationship is at present tenuous.
(12) We feel that tenuous attachments of the vitreous body to the fovea could exert traction on the vitreo-retinal interface or shrinkage of a fibrocellular membrane on the inner foveal surface could lead to the observations made by us.
(13) As has been long predicted by military critics of a bombing campaign, Mayville said Isis was already changing its tactics in response to the air strikes, particularly around Mt Sinjar, where on Saturday US warplanes attacked Isis positions surrounding the mountain where tens of thousands of Iraqi Yazidis have taken a tenuous refuge.
(14) In the years since the housing market bottomed out, Tremont and other pockets of Cleveland have witnessed a tenuous revitalisation thanks to newcomers seeking city lifestyles and new investment in 21st-century industry.
(15) Although the bright green light helped counteract sleepiness, any causal link with changes in melatonin output seem tenuous.
(16) America's arch enemy, Muammar Gaddafi, had thousands of troops camped in the remote desert of northern Chad, a forward front in his pan-African expansionist plan, but a thousand miles from Tripoli on tenuous supply lines and thus highly vulnerable.
(17) Data indicate that non-rehospitalization is associated with a stance of "positive withdrawal" (Corin 1990); it is characterized by a position at a distance from social roles and social relationships, combined with various strategies for keeping more tenuous links with the social environment.
(18) However, their entry into force was delayed for a "few days" according to a statement from Brussels, to leave time to assess the implementation of a tenuous ceasefire agreement in Ukraine negotiated last Friday.
(19) Although these results suggest a tenuous relationship between scrapie pathology and the integrity of neurotransmitter systems, it is possible that compensatory neurochemical changes in uncompromised neuronal populations may have masked potentially specific neurotransmitter effects.
(20) Mair’s links with far-right groups in the US and South Africa are well documented, but his associations with similar organisations closer to home appear more tenuous.