mute vs silent

mute

adj
  • Silent; not making a sound. 

  • Not giving a ringing sound when struck; said of a metal. 

  • Not uttered; unpronounced; silent; also, produced by complete closure of the mouth organs which interrupt the passage of breath; said of certain letters. 

  • Not having the power of speech; dumb. 

noun
  • An electronic switch or control that mutes the sound. 

  • A person who does not have the power of speech. 

  • A hired mourner at a funeral; an undertaker's assistant. 

  • A mute swan. 

  • The faeces of a hawk or falcon. 

  • An object for dulling the sound of an instrument, especially a brass instrument, or damper for pianoforte; a sordine. 

verb
  • To silence, to make quiet. 

  • To turn off the sound of. 

  • To cast off; to moult. 

silent

adj
  • With the sound turned off; usually on silent or in silent mode. 

  • Hidden, unseen. 

  • Of an edit or change to a text, not explicitly acknowledged. 

  • Keeping at rest; inactive; calm; undisturbed. 

  • Not speaking; indisposed to talk; speechless; mute; taciturn; not loquacious; not talkative. 

  • Having no effect; not operating; inefficient. 

  • Free from sound or noise; absolutely still; perfectly quiet. 

  • Not implying significant modifications which would affect a peptide sequence. 

  • Of distilled spirit: having no flavour or odour. 

  • Not pronounced; having no sound; quiescent. 

  • Undiagnosed or undetected because of an absence of symptoms. 

  • Without audio capability. 

noun
  • A silent movie 

  • That which is silent; a time of silence. 

How often have the words mute and silent occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )