silent treatment

1. 1.

   an aloof refusal to speak to someone you know

   Broaderrebuff

Questions about silent treatment

What does silent treatment mean?

silent treatment means "an aloof refusal to speak to someone you know".

Is silent treatment a common word?

silent treatment is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.