Quiet
adjectiveMaking little or no noise; calm and free from disturbance.
How to spell quiet
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce quiet
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does quiet mean?
- adjectiveMaking little or no noise; calm and free from disturbance.
- nounThe absence of noise or disturbance; calm.
- verbTo make or become calm or silent.
Quiet in a sentence
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adjective
The library stayed quiet throughout the exam period.
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noun
After the guests left, she finally enjoyed the quiet of the house.
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verb
The teacher raised a hand to quiet the restless class.
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adjective
They chose a quiet cottage well away from the motorway.
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noun
He retreated to the garden for a moment of quiet.
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verb
A gentle song can quiet a fretful baby.
Where does quiet come from?
Language of origin: Latin
Quiet comes from the Latin quietus, meaning 'at rest', 'calm' or 'undisturbed', which itself was the past participle of quiescere, 'to grow calm' or 'to be still'. English absorbed it through Old French in the 1300s, when it arrived as both an adjective for stillness and a noun for a state of repose. The very same Latin root branched into a cluster of close relatives, including 'quiescent', 'acquiesce' and even 'quit', all carrying that core idea of coming to rest or letting be. The spelling trap is purely visual: quiet keeps an internal vowel pair, q-u-i-e-t, with two syllables, whereas the unrelated adverb 'quite' loses that 'e' from the middle and ends in a silent one. Because the letters are identical apart from order, fluent writers routinely transpose them, so it helps to hear the two beats in qui-et.
How the word is built
- quiet (from Latin quietus: at rest, calm)
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