fall on deaf ears
English
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
fall on deaf ears (third-person singular simple present falls on deaf ears, present participle falling on deaf ears, simple past fell on deaf ears, past participle fallen on deaf ears)
- (intransitive, figuratively) To be ignored.
- Synonym: go in one ear and out the other
- Every time I ask him to do something for me, it falls on deaf ears.
- 1984 August 18, Eronel, “Women In Cages”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 6, page 6:
- Then there's the sad fact that for many, this place is all they know. It's home. Soooo, conversation relating to living beyond the walls falls on deaf ears sometimes.
- 2020 June 17, Christian Wolmar, “The strategy of 'don't use the railways' must be reversed...”, in Rail, page 44:
- My earlier warnings, both in RAIL and in an article I wrote for The Times, have not fallen on deaf ears. There are many people (I suspect most) in the [rail] industry who recognise that telling people not to use their trains will cause lasting damage, but they are silenced publicly because they are now taking the Government's shilling.
Translations
of a request, complaint, etc, to be ignored
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See also
Further reading
- “fall on deaf ears”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- “fall on deaf ears” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
- “fall on deaf ears”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
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