Dictionary

silentious en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /saɪˈlɛn.ʃəs/
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin silentiōsus. By surface analysis, silence + -ous.

Meanings

1. Habitually taciturn; prone to silence.
   • Can Bruce be other than Scotch? They are far more entertaining, I think, as well as informing, taken in the common run, than we silentious English; who, taken en masse, are tolerably dull. 1832, Frances Burney, Memoirs of Doctor Burney, volume 2, London: Edward Moxon, pages 50–51:
   • “[…] As I’m fond of informing some of my less educated but wealthy clients, ‘silence is often the answer’. Let’s say ten thousand pounds or guineas: could that buy a silentious disposition, sir?” 2013, M. P. Wright, chapter 39, in Heartman,, Edinburgh: Black & White Publishing, page 341:
   • It [the love of learning] is there [in Oxford] so fitly housed […] that it might almost dream itself a type of what should always and everywhere be an emanation of the literature to which it shall return after its earthly avatar, and rest, a blessed ghost, between the leaves of some fortunate book on an unvisited shelf of a vast silentious and oblivious library. 1906, William Dean Howells, “Oxford”, in Certain Delightful English Towns, New York: Harper, page 205:
   • Yet Will had very good qualities too: gentle, tractable, and, above all, grateful; silentious, even to a fault: he spoke, at any time, very little, but made it up emphatically with action; 1749, John Cleland, Fanny Hill, Letter the First:

Forms

Relateds

silentiously