“You might have heard a pin drop at the Lady Isabelle’s strange bridal, so great was the stillness, save when some knight’s good sword clashed on the marble pavement as he paced along. When it came to my turn to begin, you might have a heard a pin drop.”Īnother citation can be found in The Lady’s Book, Vol. “It was, I remember well, from the book of Kings, and we read each a verse in succession.
The expression appears in its modern form in The Edinburgh Magazine, and Literary Miscellany, May, 1822: “A pin-drop silence strikes all o’er the place.”
In 1816, Leigh Hunt uses a variation of the expression in his The Story of Rimini: “Had a fan, – for I won’t give you a pin, – fallen, I suppose we should have taken it for at least a thunder-clap.” In Fanny Burney’s diary entry, dated June 11, 1775, the phrase may not appear as we know it, but it is implied: The exact origin of the expression is unknown however, the idea of “pin-drop silence” begins to appear in print late in the 18 th century. As such, a room would have to be very quiet for you to hear one hit the ground. In case you haven’t seen a pin for a while, they tend to be quite small.
If one were to drop a fan in a room so silent that one could hear a pin drop, the sound it makes may very well seem just as loud as a thunderclap. Pin Drop offers to adults a form of intimate grown-up theatre and a sophisticated immersion in a primal human pleasure.
be able to hear even the slightest sound because of the quiet Pin Drop’s winning dedication to the act of narration upturns the view that the experience of being told a story belongs chiefly to childhood.
