MEANING
To avoid revealing your intentions or plans, especially when disclosure could reduce your advantage.
Use it for
describing guarded negotiation; showing strategic silence about future plans; withholding a competitive position; portraying someone who reveals little of their intentionsEmphasizes strategic concealment of intentions during negotiation or competition. Writing functions: Strategic reticence.
Words that belong together
- keep your cards close to your chest during negotiations
On the page
Both bidders kept their cards close to their chests until the final round.
Asked about the merger, she kept her cards close to her chest.
Word forms
- Base
- keep your cards close to your chest
Usage notes
Verbal idiom: keep/keeps/kept/keeping; change your with the subject’s possessive. Hold your cards close to your chest is an established variant. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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