1 (of a person) not speaking:
to remain / stay / keep silent * They huddled together in silent groups. * As the curtain rose, the audience fell silent. * He gave me the silent treatment (= did not speak to me because he was angry).
2 [onlybeforenoun] (especially of a man) not talking very much
SYNQUIET:
He's the strong, silent type.
3 where there is little or no sound; making little or no sound
SYNQUIET:
At last the traffic fell silent. * The streets were silent and deserted.
4 [onlybeforenoun] not expressed with words or sound:
a silent prayer / protest * They nodded in silent agreement.
5 ~ (on / about sth) not giving information about sth; refusing to speak about sth:
The report is strangely silent on this issue. * the right to remain silent (= the legal right not to say anything when you are arrested)
6 [onlybeforenoun] (of old films / movies) with pictures but no sound:
a silent film / movie * stars of the silent screen
7 (of a letter in a word) written but not pronounced:
The 'b' in 'lamb' is silent.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for silent is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is silent a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, silent is tagged as adjective.
Does silent appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — silent appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
