Word.ws English Dictionary

wall of silence

wall of silence noun: strict secretiveness maintained by the members of a group with respect to information which might be contrary to their interests, especially information concerning questionable actions by members of the group.

Noun

wall of silence (plural walls of silence)

  1. (idiomatic) Strict secretiveness maintained by the members of a group with respect to information which might be contrary to their interests, especially information concerning questionable actions by members of the group.
    • [The persecution of homosexuals in the Holocaust is] a fact deliberately buried by history. This homophobic world does not intend to let the straight world know any of the real facts. The wall of silence is deliberate.1975 December 13, Regina Kahney, Sarah Montgomery, “Everyone's Favorite Mother”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 24, page 13
    • That makes his struggle with the culture of omertà, the wall of silence that allowed the Mafia to prevail for decades, all the more poignant.1981 August 6, “Rebel with a Cause: The real-life story of an anti-Mafia activist in Sicily makes for a handsome film with a political message”, in Time

Examples of wall of silence in a sentence

  • Her parents sought the official report on the incident, but they have run into a wall of silence.1994 May 15, James Sterngold, “Japanese Begin to Crack the Wall Of Secrecy Around Official Acts”, in New York Times, retrieved 10 Aug 2012:
  • German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, said Monday that a Vatican secrecy rule has played a role in a "wall of silence" surrounding sexual abuse of children.2010 March 9, Melissa Eddy, Alessandra Rizzo, “Pope's brother: I ignored physical abuse reports”, in Businessweek, retrieved 11 Aug 2012:

Synonyms of wall of silence

Forms of wall of silence

pluralwalls of silence

Words formed from wall of silence

Questions about wall of silence

What does wall of silence mean?
Wall of silence means strict secretiveness maintained by the members of a group with respect to information which might be contrary to their interests, especially information concerning questionable actions by members of the group.
How do you use wall of silence in a sentence?
Her parents sought the official report on the incident, but they have run into a wall of silence.
What part of speech is wall of silence?
Wall of silence is a noun.
What is the plural of wall of silence?
The plural of wall of silence is walls of silence.

Words near wall of silence in the dictionary

  1. wall newspaper
  2. wall newspapers
  3. wall of death
  4. wall of galaxies
  5. wall of shame
  6. wall of silence
  7. wall of sound
  8. wall of text
  9. wall off
  10. wall paper
  11. wall pellitory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wall of 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-wall of silence.ogg.

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