Definition - used to tell someone to stop talking.

Shut your pie hole may not be apt for most academic writing.

This euphonious idiom is first found in Stephen King’s 1983 novel Christine. However, this use is preceded by a similar turn of phrase, shut your cake-hole;...

Definition - that’s enough; stop it!

Although it is often used in English, we label basta as an Italian and Spanish verb. This is due to the fact that it has never really been fully naturalized in English, even though it has been in some use for hundreds of years.

1. Zip it - to stop talking immediately.
2. Hush - usually used to tell someone to be quiet
3. Conticent - silent.
4. Obmutescence - a becoming or keeping silent or mute.
5. Shush - to urge ...

Usually used to tell someone to be quiet.

Hush may function as a number of different parts of speech (verb, noun, and adjective), although it comes from a Middle English interjection (huissht...

Definition - a becoming or keeping silent or mute.

Obmutescence is another lovely and obscure entry in the catalog of words for being quiet. It comes from adding the prefix ob- (to, toward) to the Latin mutescere (to become mute).

Definition - to urge to be quiet.

Although shush and hush would appear to be cut from the same cloth, etymologically speaking, the two words are distinct. 

Shush is of imitative origin, and is often used in the imperative to urge cess...

Definition - forbearance from speech or noise; muteness — often used interjectionally.

“Silence!” is always a good thing to yell when trying to quiet a room full of unruly children. It is unlikely to have such effect, but at least manages to convey an air of gravitas.

Definition - silent.

Sometimes it is nice to have an obscure way to refer to common things, and one would be hard-pressed to find a word more obscure than conticent.

• The word comes in part from th...