Meaning
The mass of ordinary people who do not state their views publicly, especially voters presumed to hold mainstream opinions while louder minorities dominate the debate; politicians invoke it to claim quiet, hidden backing for their policies. Political and journalistic register; because its support is unfalsifiable, treat any claim to speak for it with skepticism. Regional use: American English (origin); now General English.
Origin
Nixon made it famous in a televised address of 3 November 1969, asking 'the great silent majority of my fellow Americans' to back his Vietnam policy - a post-speech Gallup poll put support at 77 percent. But the record is far older: in May 1831 New York congressman Churchill Cambreleng protested the despotism of a silent majority in a Tammany speech reported in Niles' Weekly Register; an 1883 essay signed 'A German' said French conservatives 'would have had the whole of that silent majority with them'; Barton's 1919 Collier's piece for Coolidge lamented that 'this great silent majority had no spokesman'; Kennedy wrote in Profiles in Courage (1955) of 'the silent majority of their constituents'; Meany spoke of the vast, silent majority in 1967; and Agnew urged America's silent majority to stand up in May 1969, months before Nixon. Earlier still, joining the silent majority was a nineteenth-century euphemism for dying, as when Justice Harlan said in 1902 that Civil War soldiers had passed over to the silent majority.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- America's silent majority
- the great silent majority
- the vast silent majority
Usage Examples
- The senator insists the silent majority backs her budget cuts, even as protesters fill the square outside the Capitol.
- Pollsters keep promising that the silent majority will speak at the ballot box and punish both parties for the shutdown.
- Every candidate claims to speak for the silent majority, though nobody can quite prove what it actually wants.