awkward pause
Conversation's dead air
An awkward pause is a silence in conversation that feels uncomfortable, usually because someone has said something embarrassing, offensive, or unanswerable.
The pause becomes awkward when participants recognize it but no one knows how to break it: After his joke fell flat, there was an awkward pause before someone changed the subject.
- silenceTotal lack of sound
- dead silenceTotal absence of sound
- uncomfortableCausing unease or distress
- cringeShrink from discomfort
- tensionStretched or strained state
nervous laughter · hesitation · dead air · stammering · fidgeting · eye contact · looking away · blank stare · clearing throat · fumbling · lost for words · stilted · strained · social cues · lull · gap · moment · killing time
- awkward momentsoops, cringe, embarrassment, yikes, cringe humor
- comedy termsjokes, puns, wit, sarcasm, irony
- comedy tropespratfall, parody, sight gag, running gag, satire
- jokesjokes, joke, puns, one-liners, pun
- stage mishapsmissed cue, line flub, tripping, stumble, trip
- disfluencystutter, stammer, stammering, stuttering, disfluency
awkward pausewitty repartee
Quick, clever conversational exchange
small talk · natural flow · back-and-forth · chit-chat · conversation
awkward, pause, awkwardly, awkwardness, paused, pauses, pausing