"wall of silence" meaning in All languages combined

See wall of silence on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Audio: En-au-wall of silence.ogg Forms: walls of silence [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|walls of silence}} 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. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: code of silence, conspiracy of silence Derived forms: blue wall of silence Related terms: Vegas rule, omertà, silent treatment
    Sense id: en-wall_of_silence-en-noun-6dW7AazR Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

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    {
      "form": "walls of silence",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
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  "head_templates": [
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
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        {
          "kind": "other",
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          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "blue wall of silence"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1975 December 13, Regina Kahney, Sarah Montgomery, “Everyone's Favorite Mother”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 24, page 13:",
          "text": "[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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "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:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1994 May 15, James Sterngold, “Japanese Begin to Crack the Wall Of Secrecy Around Official Acts”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-08-10:",
          "text": "Her parents sought the official report on the incident, but they have run into a wall of silence.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "text": "2006 Quataert, Donald. \"The Massacres of Ottoman Armenians and the Writing of Ottoman History\". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 37 (2): 249–259. doi:10.1162/jinh.2006.37.2.249. ISSN 0022-1953. JSTOR 4139548.\nAfter the long lapse of serious Ottomanist scholarship on the Armenian question, it now appears that the Ottomanist wall of silence is crumbling."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010 March 9, Melissa Eddy, Alessandra Rizzo, “Pope's brother: I ignored physical abuse reports”, in Businessweek, retrieved 2012-08-11:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "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."
      ],
      "id": "en-wall_of_silence-en-noun-6dW7AazR",
      "links": [
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          "secretiveness"
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        [
          "information",
          "information"
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        [
          "contrary",
          "contrary"
        ],
        [
          "interest",
          "interest"
        ],
        [
          "questionable",
          "questionable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(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."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "Vegas rule"
        },
        {
          "word": "omertà"
        },
        {
          "word": "silent treatment"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "code of silence"
        },
        {
          "word": "conspiracy of silence"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "En-au-wall of silence.ogg",
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  "word": "wall of silence"
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{
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    {
      "word": "blue wall of silence"
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  ],
  "forms": [
    {
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      "tags": [
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    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "wall of silence (plural walls of silence)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "Vegas rule"
    },
    {
      "word": "omertà"
    },
    {
      "word": "silent treatment"
    }
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  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
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        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1975 December 13, Regina Kahney, Sarah Montgomery, “Everyone's Favorite Mother”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 24, page 13:",
          "text": "[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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "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:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1994 May 15, James Sterngold, “Japanese Begin to Crack the Wall Of Secrecy Around Official Acts”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-08-10:",
          "text": "Her parents sought the official report on the incident, but they have run into a wall of silence.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "text": "2006 Quataert, Donald. \"The Massacres of Ottoman Armenians and the Writing of Ottoman History\". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 37 (2): 249–259. doi:10.1162/jinh.2006.37.2.249. ISSN 0022-1953. JSTOR 4139548.\nAfter the long lapse of serious Ottomanist scholarship on the Armenian question, it now appears that the Ottomanist wall of silence is crumbling."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010 March 9, Melissa Eddy, Alessandra Rizzo, “Pope's brother: I ignored physical abuse reports”, in Businessweek, retrieved 2012-08-11:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "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."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "Strict",
          "strict"
        ],
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          "secretiveness",
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        [
          "contrary",
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        ],
        [
          "interest",
          "interest"
        ],
        [
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        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(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."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "code of silence"
    },
    {
      "word": "conspiracy of silence"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wall of silence"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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