noncommittal

• non-commital
• noncommital
• non-committal

non- +‎ committal[1]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌnɒnkəˈmɪtl̩/[1]
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌnɑnkəˈmɪtl̩/[1]

• Audio (US)

  (file)

noncommittal (comparative more noncommittal, superlative most noncommittal)

1. Tending to avoid commitment; lacking certainty or decisiveness; reluctant to give out information or show one's feelings or opinion.

   The Major's face was noncommittal.

   The noncommittal Indians would give no counsel as to fording.

   • 1818, S.R. Wells, The American Phrenonological Journal, and other miscellany, v. 10, p. 234:

     [He] is candid, open-hearted, and hardly non-commmittal enough for his own interest at times.

• noncommittally

• reticent

noncommittal (countable and uncountable, plural noncommittals)

1. Failure to commit to a decision or course of action.
   • 1997, Dennis Sven Nordin, The New Deal's Black Congressman, page 42:

     As a result of cowardly noncommittals during the immediate postelection period, there was so much strain on several black-white Democratic relationships that they approached open ruptures.

2. A voter etc. who has not yet committed to a decision.
   • 1981, Howard Rae Penniman, Canada at the Polls, 1979 and 1980, page 372:

     Where they occur, in the Liberal increases in Quebec and Ontario for instance, they are offset by declines in the number of undecideds or noncommittals.