broken the silence
broken the silence is the past participle of break the silence.
Meaning of break the silence
Verb
break the silence (third-person singular simple present breaks the silence, present participle breaking the silence, simple past broke the silence, past participle broken the silence)
- To start talking in a conversation after a period where nobody speaks.
- Both men waited for the captain to make a decision. Finally, Dean broke the silence. “We need to know what to do, Captain! Before we sink!”
- To state an opinion on a subject that has been taboo for a period of time.
- The Free Tibet campaign is calling on world leaders to break the silence, claiming they "continue to refrain from publicly speaking out for Tibet".2012 June 19, Julian Baggini, “Why it's not the Dalai Lama's job to break the silence on Tibet”, in The Guardian
Questions about broken the silence
- What is broken the silence the past participle of?
- Broken the silence is the past participle of break the silence.
Words near broken the silence in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: broken the silence (page history and authors); break the silence (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “broken the silence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/broken_the_silence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.