Sure, but absolutes are rarely used in their literal meaning.

"Silence" doesn't refer to the absence of any noise, it refers to a very low level of noise. The absence of any noise at all is very difficult to achieve (although you can come close: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXVGIb3bzHI). The same goes for other absolutes like "black" (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack is arguably "blacker" than other "black" materials).

You're technically correct (the best kind of correct), but your point is moot. Very few words that describe absolutes can be used "correctly" in practice. The logical conclusion is that these words (despite their dictionary definition) don't refer to actual absolutes but rather extremes: silence is not the absence of noise, it's just the presence of a significantly smaller amount of noise.

Heck, even words like "pregnant" aren't absolute in practice. With "pregnant" the implication commonly is "will give birth" (which is why we have euphemisms like "expecting"), so someone who is nearly due can be said to be "more pregnant" simply because they are closer to giving birth (and therefore also have a higher chance of delivering successfully) whereas someone within their first months of pregnancy may often not even want to disclose their state because so many things can still go wrong.

In practice "silent" or "black" is no more absolute than "cold" -- and it would be silly to expect people to refer to zero kelvin when they say "cold", don't you think?

Disclosure: I spent way too much time around linguists as a student.

> silence is not the absence of noise, it's just the presence of a significantly smaller amount of noise.

Thanks for your explanation.

Considering that other animals can produce or hear sounds that humans can't, I guess I shouldn't have used the word 'any'? :)

When I think of silence I tend to think of passively cooled heatsinks or cases for PCs that do not produce any noise that I can hear (even up close). Compare that to a slow-spinning fan that can be effectively silent at a certain distance, but still produces an audible sound if you get really close.

> In practice "silent" or "black" is no more absolute than "cold" -- and it would be silly to expect people to refer to zero kelvin when they say "cold", don't you think?

You're right, although what one person thinks of as cold may not be what another person thinks of as cold. e.g. temperatures in winter in the UK vs Russia or the North Pole. It's all relative.

Thank you both very much for your comments. With English as a second language it is easy to never learn the true meaning of words. I feel quite stuck with my current level for several years already and tiny bits like these are great improvements. Cheers!

On the other hand, logic has little to do with how language works. There are absolute and relative adjectives in English in the same way that there are count and non-count nouns, regardless of whether those semantic categories make any sense.

Damn, you couldn't have been any more on with that.