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INDISCRETION
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A petty misdeed
Synonyms:
indiscretion; peccadillo
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("indiscretion" is a kind of...):
misbehavior; misbehaviour; misdeed (improper or wicked or immoral behavior)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The trait of being injudicious
Synonyms:
indiscretion; injudiciousness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("indiscretion" is a kind of...):
folly; foolishness; unwiseness (the trait of acting stupidly or rashly)
Context examples:
His increasing fame had brought with it an immense practice, and I should be guilty of an indiscretion if I were even to hint at the identity of some of the illustrious clients who crossed our humble threshold in Baker Street.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes’s iron constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Mrs. Rushworth had left her husband's house: Mr. Rushworth had been in great anger and distress to him (Mr. Harding) for his advice; Mr. Harding feared there had been at least very flagrant indiscretion.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
MY uncle drove for some time in silence, but I was conscious that his eye was always coming round to me, and I had an uneasy conviction that he was already beginning to ask himself whether he could make anything of me, or whether he had been betrayed into an indiscretion when he had allowed his sister to persuade him to show her son something of the grand world in which he lived.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
You will be relieved to hear that there will be no war, that the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope will suffer no setback in his brilliant career, that the indiscreet Sovereign will receive no punishment for his indiscretion, that the Prime Minister will have no European complication to deal with, and that with a little tact and management upon our part nobody will be a penny the worse for what might have been a very ugly incident.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
