Dead air
Dead air noun - An inadvertent interruption in a broadcast during which there is no sound.
Mutual synonyms
Both terms in one sentence
- Dead Air, the Truth in Television phenomenon of broadcast silence on the radio.
Source: Disambig / Dead Air - No radio program theatrically fakes dead air for nineteen seconds (the silence following the Grover's Mill massacre in Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds was only four or five seconds long).
Source: Nightmare Fuel / Other - The SNL producers face-palm over Kaufman's apparent stage fright and the resulting dead air, because Kaufman never told them that the awkward silence (and the awkward doing-nothing-while-waiting-for-his-cue) was the entire joke of the sketch.
Source: Dead Air
Cite this Source
Silence and Dead air. (2016). Retrieved 2026, July 28, from https://thesaurus.plus/related/dead_air/silence
Dead air & Silence. N.p., 2016. Web. 28 Jul. 2026. <https://thesaurus.plus/related/dead_air/silence>.
Silence or Dead air. 2016. Accessed July 28, 2026. https://thesaurus.plus/related/dead_air/silence.
Google Ngram Viewer shows how "dead air" and "silence" have occurred on timeline