Word.ws English Dictionary

children should be seen and not heard

children should be seen and not heard proverb: children should behave well and be quiet, especially in the presence of adults.

Proverb

children should be seen and not heard

  1. Children should behave well and be quiet, especially in the presence of adults.
    • Until you can organize yourself and those who share your discontent, and compile and reconstruct some proposals for meeting the needs of gay youths, until you can present them in an adult (and I stress that word — ADULT) manner; lay low, my friend, for children should be seen and not heard.1978 December 9, Donald Farwell, “Our Angry Young Man”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 20, page 4

Forms of children should be seen and not heard

alternative forma child should be seen and not heard

Questions about children should be seen and not heard

What does children should be seen and not heard mean?
Children should be seen and not heard means children should behave well and be quiet, especially in the presence of adults.
What part of speech is children should be seen and not heard?
Children should be seen and not heard is a proverb.

Words near children should be seen and not heard in the dictionary

  1. children
  2. children of Ishmael
  3. Children of Israel
  4. children of the kitchen
  5. children of the manse
  6. children should be seen and not heard
  7. children's game
  8. children's games
  9. children's home
  10. children's homes
  11. children's hospital

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: children should be seen and not heard (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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