English · Idiom Candidate

silent as the grave

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Completely quiet or secretive

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Hoàn toàn im lặng hoặc bí mật

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: completely still like a grave

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

The rest,’ he shrugged, ‘ were as silent as the grave.

I soon reached an extensive, lonely heath, where all was gray and silent as the grave.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Topics: Life & death

Common questions

What does “silent as the grave” mean?

Completely quiet or secretive Literally: completely still like a grave

Is “silent as the grave” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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