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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

silent.

Free from sound or noise; absolutely still; perfectly quiet.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈsaɪ̯lənt/[ˈsaɪ̯lənt] ~ [ˈsaɪ̯ln̩t]/ˈsaːlənt/[ˈsaːlənt] ~ [ˈsaːln̩t]
  1. Free from sound or noise; absolutely still; perfectly quiet.

  2. Not speaking; indisposed to talk; speechless; mute; taciturn; not loquacious; not talkative.

  3. Keeping at rest; inactive; calm; undisturbed.

  4. Not pronounced; having no sound; quiescent.

    The e is silent in fable.
    Silent letters can make some words difficult to spell.
  5. Having no effect; not operating; inefficient.

  6. With the sound turned off; usually on silent or in silent mode.

    My phone was on silent.
  7. Without audio capability.

    The Magnavox Odyssey was a silent console.
  8. Hidden, unseen.

    a silent voter; a silent partner
  9. Of an edit or change to a text, not explicitly acknowledged.

    silent revisions; a silent emendation
  10. Not implying significant modifications which would affect a peptide sequence.

  11. Undiagnosed or undetected because of an absence of symptoms.

  12. Of distilled spirit: having no flavour or odour.

Where this word comes from

From Latin silēns (“silent”), present participle of sileō (“be silent”), from Proto-Indo-European *seyl- (“still, windless, quiet, slow”). Related to Gothic 𐌰𐌽𐌰𐍃𐌹𐌻𐌰𐌽 (anasilan, “to cease, grow still, be silent”), Old English sālnes (“silence”).

noun/ˈsaɪ̯lənt/[ˈsaɪ̯lənt] ~ [ˈsaɪ̯ln̩t]/ˈsaːlənt/[ˈsaːlənt] ~ [ˈsaːln̩t]
  1. That which is silent; a time of silence.

    uncountable
  2. A silent movie

Where this word comes from

From Latin silēns (“silent”), present participle of sileō (“be silent”), from Proto-Indo-European *seyl- (“still, windless, quiet, slow”). Related to Gothic 𐌰𐌽𐌰𐍃𐌹𐌻𐌰𐌽 (anasilan, “to cease, grow still, be silent”), Old English sālnes (“silence”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.