mute

(myo͞ot)

adj. mut·er, mut·est

1. Refraining from producing speech or vocal sound.

a. Offensive Unable to speak.

b. Unable to vocalize, as certain animals.

3. Expressed without speech; unspoken: a mute appeal.

4. Law Declining to enter a plea to a criminal charge: standing mute.

5. Linguistics

a. Not pronounced; silent, as the e in the word house.

b. Pronounced with a temporary stoppage of breath, as the sounds (p) and (b); plosive; stopped.

1. Offensive One who is incapable of speech.

2. Law A defendant who declines to enter a plea to a criminal charge.

3. Music Any of various devices used to muffle or soften the tone of an instrument.

4. Linguistics

a. A silent letter.

b. A plosive; a stop.

tr.v. mut·ed, mut·ing, mutes

1. To soften or muffle the sound of.

2. To soften the tone, color, shade, or hue of.

[Middle English muet, from Old French, from diminutive of mu, from Latin mūtus.]

mute′ly adv.

mute′ness n.

Usage Note: In reference to people who are unable to speak, mute and deaf-mute are now usually considered objectionable. Unlike blind and deaf, which are straightforward terms that need not be avoided out of fear of causing offense, mute and deaf-mute have fallen out of use and are likely to evoke older stereotypes of helplessness or pitiableness. They are especially objectionable if taken to imply that a person who cannot or does not use oral speech is thereby deprived of language. Many people who lack the ability to speak now converse through ASL or similar sign languages, which have the same communicative utility as spoken language. See Usage Note at deaf.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	muteness - the condition of being unable or unwilling to speak; "her muteness was a consequence of her deafness" mutism condition, status - a state at a particular time; "a condition (or state) of disrepair"; "the current status of the arms negotiations" deaf-muteness, deaf-mutism - congenital deafness that results in inability to speak
	2.	muteness - a refusal to speak when expected; "his silence about my contribution was surprising" silence uncommunicativeness - the trait of being uncommunicative

muteness

noun

The avoidance of speech:

dumbness, silence, speechlessness, wordlessness.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

There they lay in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.

View in context

Thy muteness even is like to strangle me, thou abysmal mute one!

View in context

I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or universality.

View in context

Even Sedley's valet, the most solemn and correct of gentlemen, with the muteness and gravity of an undertaker, could hardly keep his countenance in order, as he looked at his unfortunate master.

View in context

They took advantage of the void left by Remain's muteness on Britishness and proudly usurped them by not only making nationalism look fashionable again but neglected.

French Revolution has lessons for Brexit Britain - Alastair Stewart

'We must add that this sudden muteness indeed raised a flurry of questions that needed answers.

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He said that whenever it came to long due funds of Sindh province the leaders like Firdaus Shamim Naqvi went into muteness. If there was any hurdle in the development and progress of Sindh province, It was the federal government of the PTI, of which Firdaus Shamim Naqvi is the part of, he added.

Blame game is a distinctive characteristic of PTI leaders: Murtaza Wahab

(1) Much of the complexity of this cultural and political trauma is expressed in Hou's films as a kind of muteness, an inability to speak, and perhaps to even represent on screen, the depth and the scale of the loss.

Must an International Chinese (Auteur) Filmmaker Make a Martial Arts Film? Genre Filmmaking and Industrialised Cultural Production in Global East Asian Cinema

As Thongchai, Aphisit Hama has a very arresting muteness: it is never forced or dramatized.

The violence of loneliness and 'Manta Ray'

But there is a method to Nawaz's measured mannerism and there is a method to Maryam's maximum muteness. For now, the sword will remain sheathed; the gun will remain holstered and the rhetoric yes that sharp, pungent and cutting rhetoric that lacerated the Opposition in the heady summer days this rhetoric will remain firmly leashed.

Dial M for Maulana

Pray, why are they not implemented?With the muteness from government, we can only deduce that its agencies are hell-bent on selling expensive power to Kenyans since renewable energy projects don't provide huge paybacks and rent-seeking opportunities like such fossilised ideas as coal plants.Many investors in clean energy will tell you the investment climate for renewables faces so much formidable headwinds that most are forced to opt out.

Add 'clean' to cheap power presidential order

They actively refuse muteness and extreme inwardness.

HOW DO I NET THEE by Shira Dentz