Word.ws English Dictionary

silent treatment

silent treatment noun: a form of communication refusal where one person deliberately ignores or withholds interaction from another, often in order to express anger, disapproval, or to exert control.

Noun

silent treatment (usually uncountable, plural silent treatments)

  1. (usually) A form of communication refusal where one person deliberately ignores or withholds interaction from another, often in order to express anger, disapproval, or to exert control.
    • to give someone the silent treatment
    • Finally we gave him the silent treatment, and for weeks before he died we neither spoke to him nor did he speak to us.1917, Jack London, “That Dead Men Rise Up Never”, in The Human Drift, New York: Macmillan, page 40

silent treatment meaning in Tagalog and Arabic

silent treatment in Tagalog

ignoring a particular individual
tampo

silent treatment in Arabic

ignoring a particular individual
صَمْت عِقَابِيّ ṣamt ʕiqābiyy

Examples of silent treatment in a sentence

  • We met one woman who had been given the silent treatment by her husband for 40 years.2023 December 12, Anita Chaudhuri, “The silent treatment: ‘One woman was ostracised by her husband for 40 years’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
  • So sailors used a tried technique to deal with an offender: the silent treatment.2024 March 21, Arthur C. Brooks, “Whatever You Do, Don’t Do the Silent Treatment”, in The Atlantic:

Synonyms of silent treatment

All synonyms of silent treatment

Forms of silent treatment

pluralsilent treatments

Questions about silent treatment

What does silent treatment mean?
Silent treatment means a form of communication refusal where one person deliberately ignores or withholds interaction from another, often in order to express anger, disapproval, or to exert control.
What is silent treatment in Tagalog?
Silent treatment in Tagalog is tampo. See Silent treatment meaning in Tagalog.
How do you use silent treatment in a sentence?
We met one woman who had been given the silent treatment by her husband for 40 years.
What part of speech is silent treatment?
Silent treatment is a noun.
What is the plural of silent treatment?
The plural of silent treatment is silent treatments.

Words near silent treatment in the dictionary

  1. silent rave
  2. Silent Sam
  3. Silent Sams
  4. silent service
  5. silent services
  6. silent treatment
  7. silent treatments
  8. Silent Valley
  9. silent vote
  10. silent votes
  11. silent whistle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: silent treatment (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-silent treatment.ogg.

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