What does silence mean

Crossword clues for silence

silence

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

silence

I.noun

COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES

a brief silence

▪ After a brief silence, she made another suggestion.

a deathly hush/silence (=complete silence)

▪ A deathly hush fell over the room.

a vow of silence/poverty/celibacy etc

▪ People close to him have finally broken their vow of silence.

an embarrassed silence

▪ There was an embarrassed silence, then Gina laughed loudly.

awkward silence

▪ an awkward silence

companionable silence

▪ They sat together in companionable silence.

glum silence

▪ After dinner, Kate lapsed into a glum silence.

long silence/pause/delay etc

▪ There was a long silence before anybody spoke.

ominous silence

▪ ‘How long will she be ill?’ he asked. There was an ominous silence.

shocked silence

▪ There was a moment of shocked silence.

Silence reigned

▪ Silence reigned while we waited for news.

stony silence

▪ a stony silence

stony-faced silence

▪ Tony stared at me in stony-faced silence.

stunned silence

▪ The audience sat in stunned silence.

thoughtful silence

▪ a thoughtful silence

COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS

■ ADJECTIVE

absolute

▪ But the countryside! Absolute deafening silence.

▪ The lights, the stillness, the absolute silence can capture the soul.

▪ The air was delicate and there was a complete, absolute silence.

▪ Everything seemed to conspire to an absolute stillness and silence.

▪ As soon as he had the paper in his hand the door slammed again. Absolute silence reigned.

▪ The woods were in absolute silence.

▪ But there was absolute silence in the house.

▪ There was a smell of disinfectant. Absolute silence.

awkward

▪ An awkward silence fell between them.

▪ When we got to the restaurant, there was an awkward silence as I took out my tape recorder.

▪ There was another awkward silence, broken by the laughter from the bar.

▪ Spider said after an awkward silence.

▪ There was an awkward silence which Maidstone might have broken with some amiable remark to save Sandison's face.

▪ An awkward silence would do them both good.

▪ If Jack had been at all concerned that his impulsive gesture would result in an awkward silence he need not have worried.

▪ She figured the awkward silence was partly the result of people believing that only big topics were worthy of being discussed.

brief

▪ There was a brief, tense silence.

▪ I had to wait for a brief silence between cuts to pound on the doorframe.

▪ There was a brief silence like an indrawn breath.

complete

▪ The other three pairs came from the trees and down the sloping fields in complete silence.

▪ The crowd was stunned, and Bachelor's Button returned to unsaddle in almost complete silence.

▪ Once again he had gained complete silence.

▪ The air was delicate and there was a complete, absolute silence.

▪ They drove home in almost complete silence.

▪ The rest of the drive home passed in almost complete silence.

▪ The boy moved quickly, just ahead of Allen, guiding him more than walking with him, in complete silence.

dead

▪ The dead silence was broken only by a regular drip, drip, drip.

▪ There was only the sound of their own firing, then a dead silence.

▪ In dead silence Harley surveyed his putt and Jefferson took up his usual position beside the pin.

▪ The dead silence made contact impossible.

▪ A dead silence greeted this unusual flow of words from Mr van der Luyden.

▪ Then there was a dead silence.

▪ But the question was met by dead silence.

heavy

▪ She knew that if she didn't speak Carla would get more and more nervous, eventually breaking the heavy silence herself.

▪ Not a bird, not an insect, not a zephyr relieves that hot, heavy silence.

▪ For at least two minutes a heavy silence filled the hut.

▪ There is sun, heavy silence, a pervasive scent of parched vegetation, a lizard materialized on a rock.

▪ A heavy silence sank down on them.

▪ Most unwillingly they went and stood before the hero in heavy silence.

long

▪ There was a long silence, both of them sobered by the knowledge that casualties were likely.

▪ After more hushed discussion and an even longer silence, the driver got back into the truck and started up.

▪ There was running and shouting outside, then a long wait in silence.

▪ There was a long silence in the room.

▪ In the long silence that stretched between them she could almost hear her heart pounding like a sledge-hammer in her chest.

▪ Eventually the ground seemed to stabilize and there was a long silence during which the mist curled slowly upwards.

▪ There was a long silence as Merrill fought a desire to drop the subject which had goaded her ever since Elise died.

▪ Click, pause, click, a long silence.

ominous

▪ An ominous silence.. now intervened...

▪ There is a deep, ominous silence.

▪ But the first few readings he had assigned had produced an ominous silence.

short

▪ The short silence encourages the audience to take notice and concentrate.

▪ During the short silence the audience was to try to put together the images of Auschwitz and Agincourt.

stony

▪ Whatever their hairstyles, serious critics mostly maintained a stony silence.

▪ To avoid further childishness Leonora took refuge in stony, obdurate silence.

▪ Mutinously she flicked her gaze back to where he was surveying her in stony silence.

▪ Ned appeared to be whispering sweet nothings in her ear but his attentions were being met with a stony silence!

stunned

▪ They were immediately followed by a stunned silence.

▪ A stunned silence fell over the racecourse as he lay motionless in the grass while Heraldic galloped on.

▪ The visitor would understandably back off quickly and there would either be pandemonium or an utter, stunned silence.

▪ In stunned silence, her eyes huge, disbelieving, she stared at him.

▪ There was to be no stunned silence, no aghast staring and, it seemed, no dramatic response from Greg.

▪ He stared at her for a second in stunned silence, breathing hard, his eyes dazed.

▪ Mrs Palichuk was reduced to stunned silence for a moment.

▪ There was a moment of stunned silence.

sudden

▪ At the mention of Hilary Frome a sudden silence fell over the room.

▪ The Poole family, grouped rather self-consciously round the birthday cake on Earth, lapsed into a sudden silence.

▪ Such a traveller may sleep soundly and awaken refreshed - that is, unless the train stops and the sudden silence wakes him.

▪ In the sudden silence Isabel thought she could almost hear the life of the garden, preparing for its spring blossoming.

▪ Mafouz fell heavily to earth amidst sudden, devastating silence.

▪ In the sudden silence that followed, she realized that something was wrong.

▪ All at once he was disturbed by a sudden silence.

tense

▪ The meal was held virtually in tense silence.

▪ So they sat in tense silence together, reading.

▪ The scary bits created tense silence, while relieved cheers followed the good moments.

▪ Laura and I sat in tense silence, listening to the creak of the stairs.

▪ Inside the room, tense silence reigned.

▪ It was a long drive from the airport, made tedious by the unnatural, tense silence in the cab.

▪ When he sat down again there was a long, tense silence.

▪ Everyone worked in tense silence, concentrating on their own particular task.

total

▪ He was greeted with massive and ironic cheers from the Opposition and listened to in almost total silence by our own benches.

▪ The civilian crew of the Kora Sea observed strict social segregation, so Hicks and Gaylord played in nearly total silence.

▪ In a nine or ten acre plot crammed full with people, there was total, blanket silence.

▪ They eat in total silence and shuffle out again.

▪ Just one thing dough don't buy ya in this town, fella; total silence.

▪ There was a total silence in the house, and the room was full of moonlight.

▪ Probably the most frequently used rejection is total silence.

■ VERB

break

▪ The roar of a furnace engine broke the silence.

▪ The sound of stockinged legs moving across the room finally broke the silence.

▪ Finally Shelley felt she had to break the silence.

▪ A footstep broke the silence and approached to within ten paces of Blackburn and waited.

▪ It may be tempting to break the silence, but you can only do that by being more dogmatic or by compromising.

▪ It is that shout that needs to break the silence.

▪ A drumroll breaks the silence: loud, insistent, nerve-shattering.

drive

▪ When they travelled together in a police car they had driven around in silence.

▪ They drove in silence, back to Kalkara.

▪ We drive on in subdued silence.

▪ Felipe drove in silence and they were soon back - a fact that brought a slight tinge of regret to her face.

▪ We had driven in silence and walked in silence and eaten fish in silence.

eat

▪ They ate quickly and in silence.

▪ As usual, after the first appreciative murmurs, we sat and ate our meal in silence.

▪ They ate their toast in silence.

▪ Resigned to bananas, Fong ate thern in silence, with chopsticks.

▪ Jack ate in silence before returning to his position.

▪ We ate our breakfast in silence, rolled up our blankets, and patiently waited for orders.

▪ Agnes Resker refused to eat anything, while Mavis Pellington ate her meal in silence.

▪ They eat in total silence and shuffle out again.

follow

▪ They were immediately followed by a stunned silence.

▪ Next he heard footsteps going up the stairs, followed by silence.

▪ Benjamin whispered to her and I heard her hissed reply, followed by silence.

▪ The shape it made created its own following silence, and they sat, both in the ease of it.

▪ The shuffling stopped, followed by a long silence.

▪ There followed the longest silence I can ever recall at a seance.

▪ There followed a silence that Nicandra could neither interrupt nor question - they were the Grown-Ups.

hear

▪ First you hear the silence and then you hear it.

▪ For a long while she heard them in silence.

▪ We must be silent talking with angels we must hear silence if we are to speak to it.

▪ Have you ever heard a silence in a room at night or a great silence alone in the middle of a wood?

▪ The listeners are trained to hear and interpret silences, sighs, sobs and so on.

▪ Nestled beside his cooling body, she slept, until she heard silence and realized her eyes were open.

▪ Let us hear those sounds we have heard in that silence when we have put a handkerchief to our eyes.

▪ Jack listened, but all he heard was silence.

keep

▪ He, too, has decided to keep a public silence.

▪ But for the most part Monet kept her usual sullen silence.

▪ Adam kept his silence and cursed his helplessness.

▪ She, too, probably knows a lot of what went on behind Palace doors but has kept a dignified silence.

▪ The one unshaded light bulb shone continuously down at her, and she was kept in complete silence.

▪ Do not feel it is up to you to keep filling the silence if you have nothing more you want to say.

lapse

▪ As the rest of the tawdry tale emerged the Foreign Office and Downing Street lapsed into embarrassed silence.

▪ But ultimately, words fail them and they lapse into silence.

▪ Edward lapsed once more into strangled silence.

▪ The Poole family, grouped rather self-consciously round the birthday cake on Earth, lapsed into a sudden silence.

▪ He had lapsed into a frozen silence which she found more worrying than his screams.

▪ Without my prompting, Jack often lapsed into silence.

▪ I would talk and laugh with my companions but withdraw, lapsing into silence, when I was offered any food.

▪ She lapsed into a deep silence which I did not try to disturb.

listen

▪ Tallis, listening to the silence, realized that Wynne-Jones was whispering to Old-woman-who-sang-to-the-river.

▪ It did little to relieve; everyone listened in silence to the words and watched Saiii Fong.

▪ I ask the House to listen in reasonable silence for the next two minutes.

▪ I stood in that bathroom, water off, and listened to the silence of the tile.

▪ They sat in his room whilst the wind whistled about the eaves of the Manse, and listened to him in silence.

▪ I let up on it, listened to the silence, then buzzed again, a little longer this time.

▪ Lessing listened in silence and said he was staying.

▪ I stood on that porch listening to the silence, watching the white clouds in the dark blue summer sky.

maintain

▪ Whatever their hairstyles, serious critics mostly maintained a stony silence.

▪ Her chapped lips maintained a shrieking silence.

▪ Pooley's Piaget wristwatch had now ceased its ticking for good and all and maintained a sullen rusting silence.

▪ The new arrangement caused much criticism of the administrative board members, who maintained a discreet silence.

▪ They hoped to maintain radio silence.

▪ Red Cloud himself, now an old man, maintained an ambiguous silence.

▪ On the subject of all these movements the radio maintained an obstinate silence.

▪ Their tactics were to be to maintain a tight-lipped silence punctuated by claims that the new job was harder.

shatter

▪ A pin dropping in the attic would have shattered the silence.

▪ Her loud wails shattered the silence of the willow grove.

▪ Road-block salvo shatters Bucharest's fragile silence.

▪ Its shrill jangle shattered the intense silence.

▪ After a good few minutes, I shattered this silence by asking what we should do.

▪ A dropped pin would shatter the silence in bars during televised lottery draws.

sit

▪ So they sat in tense silence together, reading.

▪ Reagan sat in silence for another moment.

▪ Enigmatically, Boon sits in silence for a while.

▪ They sat in silence for a while.

▪ How he could just sit there in that silence was the hardest thing I have ever tried to figure out.

▪ We sat in silence, peering out the window.

▪ We sat in silence as the trap entered the estate grounds.

stand

▪ They stood close together in silence, listening.

▪ The hall is gone, and in its place only a dark ruin stands, with the silence of death about it.

▪ The Norderns looked at Marx who stood before them as if he was quite happy to stand there in silence all day.

▪ The world stood by in silence.

▪ The pub stood back in silence.

▪ If I can stand the silence Ive got it licked.

▪ They all stood around in silence.

▪ When Mrs Wade returned with a sack for Petey, she stood beside Lois in silence and then pointed.

suffer

▪ However, there is no need to continue suffering in silence.

▪ This time we would not give in, we would take the pain and suffer in silence.

▪ One in six women are believed to be victims of domestic violence, yet many are suffering in silence.

▪ When this happens, the wives are ignored, left to suffer in silence.

▪ It was more than he could bear to see the stupidity around him and just suffer it in silence.

▪ Should Janice suffer in silence in the face of continued unfair treatment by her head?

▪ Some of them may be men like John, forced by their male pride and their self-image to suffer in silence.

▪ She clenched her fists, determined to suffer in silence.

walk

▪ They walked a little way in silence.

▪ We walked along in silence, the snow crunching beneath our feet.

▪ They walked in silence while he absorbed this new twist.

▪ One may be visiting with a fried, as Cooley imaginatively walks in the silence of the woods with Thoreau.

▪ Agnes and the priest walked in embarrassed silence for a while.

▪ Simon walked beside him in silence.

▪ They walk in silence for a moment.

▪ We walked in silence for a long time.

watch

▪ Everyone was watching in silence, awaiting his verdict.

▪ Deborah watched in silence as I pinched his fingers, his ears, even nudged the responsible organ.

▪ They watched in silence for a time.

▪ The girls sit and watch in silence.

▪ Yesterday afternoon onlookers watched in silence as the mangled Land Rover was removed from the Newcastle / London line.

▪ She watched him in self-righteous silence.

▪ Gosse had been watching all in silence, his jaw clenched, his neck muscles taut.

▪ We watched in silence as the first two items were dealt with.

PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES

break the silence

▪ A footstep broke the silence and approached to within ten paces of Blackburn and waited.

▪ Finally Shelley felt she had to break the silence.

▪ Only the eerie tinkle of leg irons and shouted commands break the silence.

▪ Protestant voices now and then broke the silence.

▪ She would have to think of something to say in a minute to break the silence.

▪ The only sound to break the silence of the night was the soft mutter of my engine.

▪ The roar of a furnace engine broke the silence.

▪ The sound of stockinged legs moving across the room finally broke the silence.

conspiracy of silence

▪ There has been a conspiracy of silence about violations of regulations.

▪ Curiously enough the Dunrossness District Plan avoids mentioning these negative aspects, so was there a conspiracy of silence here?

▪ Should you be acting as the peacemaker in your family, or the one who breaks the conspiracy of silence?

▪ Sometimes children need to break the conspiracy of silence.

▪ The conspiracy of silence about teenage sexuality had many results.

▪ The overall effect is precisely the same as if there were an organised conspiracy of silence among churchmen.

▪ The whole thing sometimes appears such an enigma that there might almost have been a conspiracy of silence.

▪ Then, there is the conspiracy of silence which is part of the legacy of Northern Ireland.

▪ There is a conspiracy of silence about what is happening, says Christina Hardyment That's entertainment.

deafening silence

▪ Activists criticized the state's deafening silence on the issue of immigration.

▪ All that remained on the barren expanse was a deafening silence.

▪ But while those hotspots are continuously monitored by diplomats and the media, the Chechen misery prompts nothing but a deafening silence.

▪ Once again the answer was a deafening silence.

▪ The most extraordinary feature of the Opposition's response has been the deafening silence of their principal spokesman in relation to the proposals.

▪ We submitted a carefully considered response at the end of June, since when there has been a deafening silence. 3.

heavy silence/atmosphere

▪ A heavy silence fell upon the room.

▪ A heavy silence sank down on them.

▪ For at least two minutes a heavy silence filled the hut.

▪ He has a ready supply, and despite the heavy atmosphere and flat light it carries us out to Langdale.

▪ Most unwillingly they went and stood before the hero in heavy silence.

▪ Not a bird, not an insect, not a zephyr relieves that hot, heavy silence.

▪ She knew that if she didn't speak Carla would get more and more nervous, eventually breaking the heavy silence herself.

▪ There is sun, heavy silence, a pervasive scent of parched vegetation, a lizard materialized on a rock.

lapse into unconsciousness/silence/sleep etc

▪ But ultimately, words fail them and they lapse into silence.

▪ I would talk and laugh with my companions but withdraw, lapsing into silence, when I was offered any food.

▪ Soon after that she would lapse into sleep, then unconsciousness, then a state of deep coma.

▪ Without my prompting, Jack often lapsed into silence.

pregnant pause/silence

▪ The problem with his lofty sentiments and pregnant pauses was that they were completely eclipsed by his reputation.

▪ There was a long silence - what I think might be called a pregnant pause.

reduce sb to tears/silence etc

▪ At mealtimes, Kornemann would rail at his wife in front of the boys, reducing her to tears.

▪ He has in his grasp the ability to reduce anyone to tears, through a snappy headline or lurid story.

▪ Initially, it was the existential absurdity of his predicament that reduced Sooty to silence.

▪ It becomes the subject of innumerable short stories and songs, of films that reduce their audiences to tears.

▪ Outside in her car she kept a tight grip on herself, refusing to let her humiliation reduce her to tears.

▪ She would come home in tears and reduce my wife to tears.

▪ They might stop me having visitors if they think I reduce them to tears.

shatter the silence/peace

silence/a hush/sadness etc falls

swear sb to secrecy/silence

▪ Amy told no one else except her younger brother Howard, and she swore him to secrecy.

▪ He swore his family to secrecy and tried to continue living a normal life, making regular stage appearances and several movies.

▪ Jett swore me to secrecy, with particular reference to you.

▪ Lois had sworn her to secrecy.

▪ No, surely he would swear her to secrecy - if he really did agree in the end to Miguel's request.

▪ She swore him to secrecy and asked him to build the barrel.

▪ They swore one another to secrecy.

▪ This time I had taken the precaution of tipping off the organizers in advance and swearing them to silence.

veil of secrecy/deceit/silence etc

▪ He had apparently recovered from his visit to Johanna, hiding his feelings behind the usual veil of secrecy.

▪ Justice can not prevail under a veil of secrecy or behind doors that do not open.

▪ The client has thrown a veil of secrecy over the development, with contractors reluctant to discuss the project.

wall of silence/secrecy

▪ A wall of silence has now descended over the key players.

▪ Blount met with a convenient wall of silence.

▪ But the wall of silence that protected behind the scenes negotiations produced no answers.

▪ Only Jim Crane, ambitious but a little more human than the other hacks, can break Alice's wall of silence.

▪ Other cracks in the wall of secrecy have appeared in recent years, as we shall see in Chapter 5.

▪ Very soon a cold stone wall of silence had tormented them to wounded exasperation.

EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES

▪ "What did you do during the war?" Rob asked. There was a deathly silence, and everyone looked down at the table.

▪ A voice echoed in the silence.

▪ After years of silence, we were talking on the phone every few weeks.

▪ Nothing disturbed the silence of the night.

▪ The school observed a minute of silence in honor of the students who had died.

▪ There was a long silence before anyone answered.

EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS

▪ And then silence again and the whole sequence begins anew.

▪ Enigmatically, Boon sits in silence for a while.

▪ He lit his cigar and we sat in silence for a long moment.

▪ I resented her silence too, it cut me out.

▪ The only sound to break the silence of the night was the soft mutter of my engine.

▪ Yearn to be surrounded by marble, priceless manuscripts and silence?

II.verb

COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS

■ NOUN

attempt

▪ Youths fired an arrow through the window of one house and set light to another in an attempt to silence them.

▪ More important, an attempt by legislators to silence both prosecutors and judges defeats the spirit of co-equal branches of government.

critic

▪ Kylie's voice - backed up by a sophisticated set of taped effects in case of emergency - had silenced many of her critics.

▪ This is because balding has helped women humble and silence our male critics.

voice

▪ Buxton, perhaps despite himself, grew anxious not to alienate Tory support, even if that meant silencing more liberal voices.

▪ The threat of imperialist attack remains, and the bureaucracy uses this threat quite consciously to periodically silence the voices of opposition.

▪ Rationality equals oppression and the silencing of marginalized voices!

■ VERB

reduce

▪ Initially, it was the existential absurdity of his predicament that reduced Sooty to silence.