Quiet or quite?
quiet is an adjective meaning “With little or no sound; free of disturbing noise”; quite is an adverb meaning “With verbs, especially past participles”. Use quiet as an adjective and quite as an adverb. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) quite is about 4.4 times as common as quiet.
What is the difference between quiet and quite?
| quiet | quite | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, verb, noun, interjection | adverb, interjection, noun |
| Meaning | With little or no sound; free of disturbing noise Having little motion or activity; calm To cause (someone or something) to become quiet | With verbs, especially past participles With prepositional phrases and spatial adverbs UKIndicates agreement; exactly so |
| Example | I can't hear the music; it is too quiet | “That's a rather ugly colour for a house, don't you think?” – “Quite.” |
| Forms | quieter, quietest | none |
| Pronunciation | /ˈkwaɪ̯.ət/ [ˈkʰw̥aɪ̯.ət] | /kwaɪ̯t/ [ˈkʰw̥aɪ̯t] /ˈkiːteɪ/ |
| In writing | 45 times per million words | 195 times per million words |
Sources: quiet and quite in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of quiet and quite
quiet
- 1
With little or no sound; free of disturbing noise
I can't hear the music; it is too quiet
- 2
To cause (someone or something) to become quiet
Can you quiet your child? He’s making lots of noise
- 3
The absence of sound; quietness
There was a strange quiet in the normally very lively plaza
- 4
Be quiet
Quiet! The children are sleeping
- 5
Having little motion or activity; calm
the sea was quiet
- 6
To become quiet or calm
When you quiet, we can start talking
- 7
The absence of movement; stillness, tranquility
- 8
Not busy, of low quantity
The traffic was quiet for a Monday morning
quite
- 1
With verbs, especially past participles
- 2
UKIndicates agreement; exactly so
“That's a rather ugly colour for a house, don't you think?” – “Quite.”
- 3
A series of passes made with the cape to distract the bull
- 4
With prepositional phrases and spatial adverbs
- 5
With predicative adjectives
- 6
With attributive adjectives, following an (especially indefinite) article; chiefly as expressing contrast, difference etc
- 7
Preceding nouns introduced by the indefinite article. Chiefly in negative constructions
- 8
With adverbs of manner
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, quiet or quite?
quiet appears 45 times per million words; quite 195 times per million words.
quiet 45 times per million wordsquite 195 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search quiet vs quite?
“quiet vs quite” is searched about 5,400 times a month on Google and 110 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“quite vs quiet”, “quiet or quite”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.