silent treatment

Definitions

A form of social sanction that consists of ignoring a particular individual, neither speaking to that person nor responding to his or her words.

uncountable, usually

Equivalents

Examples

“to give⟳ someone the silent treatment”

“Finally we gave him the silent treatment, and for weeks before he died we neither spoke to him nor did he speak⟳ to us.”

“We met one woman who had been given the silent treatment by her husband for 40 years. If the silent treatment becomes a longstanding pattern, you lose⟳ self-esteem and perspective.”

“So sailors used a tried technique to deal⟳ with an offender: the silent treatment. They would ignore⟳ him completely for weeks on end⟳. That might sound⟳ like⟳ an innocuous action to you, but in truth, it was far from it. The silent treatment was, according to the writer Otis Ferguson in 1944, “a process⟳ so effective in the monotony of ship’s life as to make⟳ strong men weep⟳.””

CEFR level