pregnant pauses
Loaded dramatic silences
A pregnant pause is a silence heavy with unspoken meaning—a deliberate gap in speech that suggests something significant is about to follow or be understood.
The metaphor treats the silence as carrying something inside it, ready to be delivered: After a pregnant pause, she said yes.
The plural describes a pattern of such silences: His speech was full of pregnant pauses.
- silenceTotal lack of sound
- suspenseAnxious uncertainty about outcomes
- ellipsisMark indicating omitted words
- subtextImplicit meaning beneath words
- nonverbal cuesUnspoken communication signals
beat of silence · unspoken words · implied meaning · anticipation · waiting game · dramatic effect · dramatic timing · comic timing · tension · held breath · hush · rhetorical device · understatement · hesitation · cadence · public speaking · emotional resonance · buildup
pregnant pausesawkward silence
Uncomfortable lull in conversation
dead air · filler words · stammering · white noise · babbling
pregnant pausescontinuous flow
Uninterrupted movement onward
verbal diarrhea · motormouth · stream of consciousness · logorrhea · rambling
pregnant, pauses, pause, pregnancy, impregnate, impregnation, paused, pausing, pauser