"wall of silence" meaning in English

See wall of silence in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-wall of silence.ogg [Australia] 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

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for wall of silence meaning in English (3.0kB)

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          "word": "blue wall of silence"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "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": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "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": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "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": "quotation"
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        "(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."
      ],
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          "word": "Vegas rule"
        },
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          "word": "omertà"
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          "word": "silent treatment"
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        {
          "word": "code of silence"
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        {
          "word": "conspiracy of silence"
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      "tags": [
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{
  "derived": [
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      "word": "blue wall of silence"
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    {
      "word": "Vegas rule"
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    {
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        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "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": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "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": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "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."
        },
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          "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": "quotation"
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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."
      ],
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        "idiomatic"
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      "tags": [
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  "synonyms": [
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      "word": "code of silence"
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      "word": "conspiracy of silence"
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  "word": "wall of silence"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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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