[
UK
/sˈaɪləns/
]
[ US /ˈsaɪɫəns/ ]
[ US /ˈsaɪɫəns/ ]
NOUN
-
a refusal to speak when expected
his silence about my contribution was surprising - the trait of keeping things secret
-
the state of being silent (as when no one is speaking)
he gestured for silence
there was a shocked silence -
the absence of sound
the street was quiet
he needed silence in order to sleep
VERB
-
cause to be quiet or not talk
Please silence the children in the church! -
keep from expression, for example by threats or pressure
All dissenters were silenced when the dictator assumed power
How To Use silence In A Sentence
- Silence is the rule for our heroes, and that means a bit of extra claustrophobia to scenes that would otherwise be totally generic.
- We drove home in silence and, when he parked in our long driveway, I stopped to pluck some ixora flowers while Nnamabia unlocked the front door. Excerpt: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- An incredulous snort came from Chris, and I gave him dirty look that silenced him up.
- The two males held their silence as she finished, all the noise ceased apart from the soft pad of hooves in the night air.
- Rebecca was too embarrassed to reply, but he took her silence as an affirmative.
- They stood in silence as a mark of honour to her.
- Here, the curatorial silence makes you study both extremes. Times, Sunday Times
- The spirit of a soldier of the Truth entered into me; weary as I was, I rushed from the dusky corner where I had been hidden in the twilight, ran to the altar, and held up my hand with my hymn-book as I began to repeat an address that had often silenced the papistic mummers in England. In the Wrong Paradise
- They said that as their longer "taciturnity" might cause the ruin of his Majesty's affairs, they were at last compelled to break silence. The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Complete (1555-84)
- The empty expanses of the puna, as the grasslands are called in the Andes, correspond to the silence in which we walked.