N. faintness, faint sound, whisper, breath, undertone, underbreath, murmur, hum, susurration, tinkle, "still small voice." hoarseness, raucity

V. whisper, breathe, murmur, purl, hum, gurgle, ripple, babble, flow, tinkle, mutter, susurrate, steal on the ear, melt in the air, float on the air

Adj. inaudible, scarcely audible, just audible, low, dull, stifled, muffled, hoarse, husky, gentle, soft, faint, floating, purling, flowing, whispered, liquid, soothing, dulcet, susurrant, susurrous

Adv. in a whisper, with bated breath, sotto voce, between the teeth, aside, piano, pianissimo, d la sourdine, out of earshot inaudibly, (ii) specific sounds

N. thud, thump, dead sound, # nonresonance, muffled drums, cracked bell, damper, silencer

V. sound dead, stop the sound, damp the sound, deaden the sound, deaden the reverberations, dampen the reverberations

Adj. nonresonant, dead, dampened, muffled

N. {ant. 525} latency, inexpression, hidden meaning, occult meaning, occultness, mystery, cabala, anagoge, silence, concealment, more than meets the eye, more than meets the ear, delphic oracle, le dessous des cartes, undercurrent, implication, logical implication, logical consequence, entailment, allusion, insinuation, innuendo, adumbration, "something rotten in the state of denmark", snake in the grass, secret, darkness, invisibility, imperceptibility

V. be latent, lurk, smolder, underlie, make no sign, escape observation, escape detection, escape recognition, lie hid, laugh in one's sleeve, keep back, involve, imply, understand, allude to, infer, leave an inference, entail, whisper, read between the lines

Adj. latent, lurking, secret, occult, implied, dormant, abeyant, unapparent, unknown, unseen, in the background, invisible, indiscoverable, dark, impenetrable, unspied, unsuspected, unsaid, unwritten, unpublished, unbreathed, untalked of, untold, unsung, unexposed, unproclaimed, undisclosed, unexpressed, not expressed, tacit, undeveloped, solved, unexplained, untraced, undiscovered, untracked, unexplored, uninvented, indirect, crooked, inferential, by inference, by implication, implicit, constructive, allusive, covert, muffled, steganographic, understood, underhand, underground, delitescent, concealed

Adv. by a side wind, sub silentio, in the background, behind the scenes, behind one's back, on the tip of one's tongue, secretly, between the lines

Phr. "thereby hangs a tale", tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus, where there's smoke, there's fire