in silence
87
2.1
- idiom
:
en silencio
- Are we all just gonna sit here in silence?
- suffer in silence
- pass over in silence
- sit in silence
But if you cannot live in silence with yourself, you're not OK.
- But if you cannot live in silence with yourself, you're not OK.
- And instead I chose to sit in front of a wall in silence for an hour and a half.
- I could cry or scream or just sit in silence.
- And then I was like, oh, so we just walked in silence for about the rest of the hike.
- I know that you're worried about what you'll hear if you truly sit in silence.
- Well, because they'll know in silence that we're holding our breath.
- So I just watched and looked at the highlights in silence and kept to myself.
Examples
-
Let us pray in silence.
-
I was stunned by this news, and we walked in silence for a while.
Fiction book (1991) -
When you spend more time in silence than you do talking, you find you know so much.
-
I challenge you to... sit in silence for 25 minutes.
-
I mean, we could just stand here in silence for a bit.
-
I like to work in silence!
-
We stood there in the street in silence for a long moment, our eyes meeting.
Fiction book (1990) -
For dementia care, sitting in silence is actually the doing, and that is important.
Academic text (2011) -
"For a few moments, the men sat in silence, each deep in his own thoughts.
Fiction book (1990) -
We spent the entire afternoon in silence, enjoying each other's company without the need for words.
Synonyms
517
1.0
In a quiet way that makes little or no noise
129
1.2
In a quiet way without making any sound or speaking
6
3.9
To do something without speaking or using words
5
4.4
In a way that makes no sound
3
5.6
Without speaking or making any sound
3
4.4
Without making any sound
2
6.3
So quietly that no one can hear
Used when a decision or action is not said openly, often in law
Antonyms
How Quiet
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is directly compositional: 'in' marks a state or location and 'silence' denotes an absence of sound, so 'in silence' straightforwardly means 'in a state of no sound' or 'without speaking'. This construction is cross-linguistically common (e.g., Spanish 'en silencio', French 'en silence'), so a B1 learner who knows the two words will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
In silence may come from the simple image of people gathered in a quiet room with no one speaking, all staying in silence like at a ceremony or in a courtroom. So it means 'without speaking' or 'quiet'.