quietness: a calm, settled, peaceable manner or state, the opposite of agitation rather than the absence of speech
This word points to a calm, settled way of being, not to keeping one's mouth shut. In everyday Greek it described a person or a community at rest: the citizen who minds his own affairs, the composed soul, a land at peace after war. Greek already had separate words for actual silence, the absence of speech, and its writers reached for those when they meant it.
The New Testament keeps this same feel. The word covers the calm, unmeddling life Christians are urged to lead, the receptive quiet of someone learning, and the hush of a crowd settling down to listen. In every case the point is a lack of turmoil, not a lack of words.
The one place this matters most is Paul's instruction that a woman learn in quietness. Older English Bibles rendered it silence, which set off a long argument. But the word itself asks for a calm, teachable manner, not muteness; the debate over what that manner implies is a separate question from what the word means.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether ἡσυχία has a distinct sense "silence" (the absence of speech), or whether it always denotes a settled quietness of manner, with actual verbal silence reserved for other Greek words (σιγάω, σιωπάω).
- majorityThe word denotes settled composure or a peaceable demeanor throughout; the New Testament uses σιγάω/σιωπάω, not this word, for actual verbal silence.; Otto Bauernfeind, 'ἡσυχία κτλ.,' in TDNT 2:284-286; Moisés Silva, ed., NIDNTTE, 2nd ed., s.v. ἡσυχάζω κτλ.; Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. ἡσύχιος/ἡσυχία
- minorityThe word carries a distinct "silence" sense in some passages (Acts 22:2; 1 Timothy 2:11-12), listed as a separate sub-entry.; BDAG, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed., s.v. ἡσυχία; Joseph Henry Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. ἡσυχία; Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed., §33.118