0 without talking or making any noise:
She wept silently into a handkerchief.
1 If something happens silently, especially something bad, you do not notice that it is happening:
We all ate silently.
Silently, from across the road, they watched who came and went.
After months of silently pining for her, he mustered the courage to talk to her at a party.
Inflation could silently erode your purchasing power.
They declare that the disease may be dormant, or develop silently, for twenty or thirty years before manifesting.
Hepatitis C can exist symptom-free for decades, silently damaging your liver.
