Other forms: quieter, quietest
Quiet means making little or no sound. A quiet room, a quiet child, a quiet engine — and by extension a quiet street, a quiet week, a quiet person, where the point is that not much is happening.
Quiet is not the same as silent. Silent is zero sound; quiet is little sound, and quiet can be a pleasant state where silent is often an absence. There is also a spelling trap that survives well into advanced English: quiet is the sound word, quite is the degree word, and one letter apart they are not related at all. Say it as two syllables — KWY-et — and quite as one, and the ear will keep them separate even when the pen does not.
1adjectivequietMaking very little sound.~70%
“Please be quiet during the exam.”
2adjectiveactivityWithout much activity or excitement.~14%
“It has been a quiet week at work.”
3adjectivereservedOf a person, saying little by nature.~14%
“He is quiet until you get him onto football.”
synonyms: reserved
4nounstateThe state of being free from noise or disturbance.~2%
“She went outside for a bit of peace and quiet.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 8 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
quiet is a state of little sound.
Also accepted in games: silent
Latin quietus meant at rest, and behind it lies a root meaning simply rest. The same word gave English quit — to leave off — and requiem, the rest asked for the dead. Quiet is what rest sounds like.
Latin
quiētus
French
quiet
Middle English
quiete
English, today
quiet
Built from
From Middle English quiete, from French quiet, from Latin quiētus. From Middle English quiete, from Old French quiet and quiete, from Latin quiētus, past participle of quiesco (“to keep quiet, rest”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European kʷyeh₁- (“rest”). a doublet of coy and quit and quite and quietus. Largely displaced native English still in the sense of "with little or no sound".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA