the.com/quietness
Silence with a personality — the sound of nothing trying to tell you something.
means The state of being quiet — low or absent noise, or a calm, undisturbed condition.
from Built plainly from 'quiet' plus the noun-forming suffix '-ness.' 'Quiet' itself descends from Latin 'quies' (rest, repose), via Old French 'quiete' — the same root that gives us 'quiescent' and 'requiem.' The '-ness' is pure Old English, tacked on to turn a state into a thing you can name and notice.
- not silence
- silence lacks sound, quietness lacks noise
- biology
- inner ear never fully rests, even in quiet
- libraries
- originally loud, hushed only in 19th century
- perception
- anxious minds hear quiet as louder than it is