Home › Glossary › Letter A

audi vide tace

Latin Phrases
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Hear, see, be silent; an injunction to observe carefully and speak sparingly.

Detailed Definition
Audi vide tace is a motto associated with prudence, discretion, and careful observation. In poetry, it describes the discipline of the attentive witness, the poet who watches and listens before speaking. It is connected to the ethic of close observation in nature poetry, the via negativa in mystical verse, and the Keatsian capacity for negative capability. The phrase valorizes silence as a form of wisdom and suggests that the deepest truths are apprehended rather than spoken.
Example
Example in poetry:
The monastic tradition of audi vide tace shaped a whole tradition of contemplative poetry — the verse of Cistercian and Benedictine writers who learned to speak only after long silence and observation; Thomas Traherne's "Centuries of Meditations" embodies audi vide tace — the poet has watched, listened, and been silent before allowing himself to speak of the world's glory; A student might be set an audi vide tace exercise — spending an hour in silent observation before writing, allowing the poem to emerge from accumulated listening rather than immediate verbal reflex; Basho's haiku practice is the Japanese equivalent of audi vide tace — the poet observing with extreme attentiveness before distilling the experience into seventeen syllables; Elizabeth Bishop's poetry exemplifies audi vide tace — her famously slow compositional process reflecting years of patient watching before the poem was allowed to speak
Additional Notes
Audi vide tace is associated with the Freemasons as a motto of discretion, but its roots are in the classical and monastic traditions of contemplative wisdom. The three imperatives — hear, see, be silent — establish a hierarchy: the first two faculties (hearing and seeing) are active, receptive, and open; the third (silence) is the response that consolidates and deepens what has been received. Students should note that this is precisely the model of the lyric poet as described by many practitioners: years of observation and receptivity, followed by the concentrated act of composition that transforms what has been received into a poem. The via negativa in mystical poetry — the tradition of approaching the divine through negation and silence — is closely related to audi vide tace. Related terms include taciturnitas (silence as a virtue), contemplatio (contemplation), and the Benedictine concept of lectio divina (sacred reading through attentive, meditative silence).
Also Known As
hear see be silent listen see be silent audi vide et tace
Skip to main content