Word.ws English Dictionary

dead silence

dead silence noun: a particularly distinct or awkward silence or absence of response.

Noun

dead silence (usually uncountable, plural dead silences)

  1. (idiomatic, usually) A particularly distinct or awkward silence or absence of response.
    • A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with Venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing carriage archways right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 199
    • The unsufficiency and uncandidness of his answer became painfully apparent in the dead silence of the room.1906 January–October, Joseph Conrad, chapter IX, in The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Collection of British Authors; 3995), copyright edition, London: Bernhard Tauchnitz, published 1907, →OCLC, page...

Synonyms of dead silence

Forms of dead silence

pluraldead silences

Questions about dead silence

What does dead silence mean?
Dead silence means a particularly distinct or awkward silence or absence of response.
What part of speech is dead silence?
Dead silence is a noun.
What is the plural of dead silence?
The plural of dead silence is dead silences.

Words near dead silence in the dictionary

  1. dead set
  2. dead set against
  3. dead sets
  4. dead shot
  5. dead shots
  6. dead silence
  7. dead silences
  8. dead sleep
  9. dead sleeps
  10. dead soldier
  11. dead soldiers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead 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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