STILLNESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does stillness mean? 

• STILLNESS (noun)
  The noun STILLNESS has 3 senses:

1. (poetic) tranquil silence

2. calmness without winds

3. a state of no motion or movement

  Familiarity information: STILLNESS used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• STILLNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(poetic) tranquil silence

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

hush; still; stillness

Context example:

the still of the night

Hypernyms ("stillness" is a kind of...):

quiet; silence (the absence of sound)

Domain category:

poesy; poetry; verse (literature in metrical form)

Derivation:

still (marked by absence of sound)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Calmness without winds

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

stillness; windlessness

Hypernyms ("stillness" is a kind of...):

calmness (an absence of strong winds or rain)

Derivation:

still ((of a body of water) free from disturbance by heavy waves)

still (free from noticeable current)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A state of no motion or movement

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

lifelessness; motionlessness; stillness

Context example:

the utter motionlessness of a marble statue

Hypernyms ("stillness" is a kind of...):

state (the way something is with respect to its main attributes)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "stillness"):

fixedness; immobility; stationariness (remaining in place)

Derivation:

still (free from noticeable current)

still (not in physical motion)

still (used of pictures; of a single or static photograph not presented so as to create the illusion of motion; or representing objects not capable of motion)

 Context examples 

They kept close to the door and closer to one another, for the stillness of the empty room was more dreadful than any of the forms they had seen Oz take.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

The chapel was soon afterwards left to the silence and stillness which reigned in it, with few interruptions, throughout the year.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

When, therefore, a voice broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The stillness was broken by Van Helsing's voice speaking in a low level tone which would not break the current of her thoughts:—"Where are you?"

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Yet it was quite certain, from the absolute stillness, that we were in the country.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural stillness seemed to reign through the whole house!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish laugh.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

My heart sank at that ominous stillness.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had succeeded, stood back a little and peered in.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

So quiet and reposeful within, for everyone slept, spent with watching, and a Sabbath stillness reigned through the house, while nodding Hannah mounted guard at the door.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)