"Sibilant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... returned to the assault in all earnest. She made her appearance looking quite scared, and waited impatiently till there was no one in the shop, when she burst out in her sibilant voice: ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... earthwork, from whence there is a noble view of hill and plain. The inner slope of the green fosse is inclined at an angle pleasant to recline on, with the head just below the edge, in the summer sunshine. A faint sound as of a sea heard in a dream—a sibilant 'sish, sish'—passes along outside, dying away and coming again as a fresh wave of the wind rushes through the bennets and the dry grass." ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Dal supplants the Zal; e.g. Dahaba (for zahaba) he went (v. 277 and passim); also T takes the place of Th, as Tult for thulth one third (iii. 348) and Tamrat (for thamrat) fruit (v. 260), thus generally ignoring the sibilant Th after the fashion of the modern Egyptians who say Tumm (for thumma) again; "Kattir (for kaththir) Khayrak" God increase thy weal, and Lattama (for laththama) he veiled. Also a general ignoring of the dual, e.g. Haza 'usfurayn (for 'Usfurani) ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... breeches. The room wavered and blurred in his weary vision—squat, rush-bottomed Dutch chairs seemed to revolve about a table with apparently a hundred legs, a bearskin floated across the floor.... He secured the banian; and, swathing himself in its cool, sibilant folds, he fell, his face hid in an angle of his arm, into an immediate ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... looked at him with drooping eyelids and a slight smile so full of acid possibilities that De la Riviere drew in a sibilant breath of delight. Her movement had been as towards an impertinence; but as she caught Valmond's eye, something in it, so really boylike, earnest, and free from insolence, met hers, that, with a little way she had, she laid back her head slowly, her lips parted in a sweet, ambiguous ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Presently the sibilant rush of waters forewarns rapids. Indians and voyageurs debark, invert canoes on their shoulders, packs on back with straps across foreheads, and amble away over the portages at that voyageurs' dog-trot which is half walk, half ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... corrupt spelling of pakhan, the Sanskrit pashana or pasana, 'a stone'. The compound pashana-murti is commonly used in the sense of 'stone image'. The sibilant sh or s usually is pronounced as kh in Northern India (Grierson, J.R.A.S., ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... in a violent whisper, so strong and sibilant that every word was audible to the watcher at ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lips so lately smiling; strong swimmers fighting for another moment's breath, and one by one dragged down by many hidden hands: then the sharp hiss of swift-quenched flames, then darkness, and the stifling of sobbing groans into silence, and after that only the sibilant undertone of waters rushing swiftly past smooth walls ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... from the dense shadows of a fern-brake far in the woods on the right, and they heard the muffled trickling of water, falling on mossy stones hard by, from a spring so slight as to be only a silver thread. The trees far below waved in the wind, and a faint dryadic sibilant singing sounded a measure or so, and grew fainter in the lulling of the breeze, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of a snake rose to them from the depths. That is a sound never forgotten when once heard. It is like unto no other. Indeed, the term "hiss" is a misnomer for the quick sibilant expulsion of the breath by an alarmed ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... that there was no possibility of escape from them. We became aware that there was a great variety of them in the swamps and thickets beneath through the noises that they made—heart-quaking cries, squealing sounds, gruntings, and, most trying of all, a loud, piercing whistle whose sibilant pulsations penetrated the ear like thrusts of a needle. I pictured to myself a colossal serpent as the most probable author of this terrifying sound, but the error of my fancy was demonstrated by a tragedy which shook even ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... were covered again, and this little world began to surge into the church, young Nick's Hattie moved closer to her husband and shot out a sibilant whisper:— ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her—Monsieur d'Agreste, the man who refused to bear his title—her views ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... words were a signal, the crowd about them surged up suddenly, with the harsh scrape of many chair-legs and an odd, sibilant sound, caused by a multitude of quick-drawn breaths. Like a flash Buck pulled his gun and leveled ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... astir. Thin columns of blue smoke drifted up here and there between the close-set tents, and the sibilant wearing of stone-mills, as they ground the wheat, was heard in many households. The nutty aroma of parching lentils, and the savor of roasting papyrus root and garlic told the stage of the morning meal. The strong-armed women, rich brown in tint from the ardent sun, crowned with coil upon ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... was the conjecture that dropped from the ship-carpenter's lips, while the same thought occurred simultaneously to the others; for they could think of no living thing, other than a serpent, capable of sending forth such a sibilant sound as that ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... a sibilant duet from Grace and Jock. "Not now. She's sleeping. We were up with her for three hours last night. It was the new food. She's ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... back sixty years into the lives of Miss Mitford and her "dear young friend Miss Barrett," when the -esses of "authoresses" and "poetesses" and "editresses" and "hermitesses" make the pages sibilant; when 'Books of Beauty,' and 'Keepsakes,' and the extraordinary methods of "Finden's Tableaux" make us wonder that literature survived; when Mr. Kenyon, taking Miss Mitford "to the giraffes and the Diorama," called for "Miss Barrett, a hermitess in Gloucester Place, who reads Greek as I do ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... she replied, speaking the universal language with a sibilant accent that was very fascinating, "to speak ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... and Tony lay like a veritable Samson shorn of his strength, for his voice was sunken to a hoarse, sibilant whisper, and his black eyes gazed fiercely from the shock of hair and beard about a white face. Life went on pretty much as before in the shop; the children paused to ask how Mr. Tony was, and ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... the Treasury Cluck, like chicken, Now with small beaks the ravenous Bill opposing;[212:1] With serpent-tongue now stinging, and now licking, 15 Now semi-sibilant, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... nights Tatsu remained to himself. The anxious listeners heard at times the sound of restless pacing up and down,—the thin, sibilant noise of stockinged feet sliding on padded straw. Again there would be a thud, as of a body fallen, or sunken heavily to the floor. Kano, on the second day, pale with apprehension, went early to the hospital for a revocation, or at least a modification ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... same hour as before—according to the report—someone called up the establishment, asking for "Miguel." This was the quadroon, and I heard his thick voice replying. The other voice—which had first spoken—was curiously sibilant but very distinct. Yet it did not sound like the voice of a Frenchman or of any ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... to the left, strained up, and, holding thus, reached out with his right. The hand closed about the cluster, and the twig was broken. Grayson gave a great shout then. He turned his head as though to drop them, and, that far away, I heard the sibilant whir of rattles. I saw a snake's crest within a yard of his face, and, my God! I saw Grayson loose his left hand to guard it! The snake struck at his arm, and Grayson reeled and caught back once at the ledge with his left hand. He caught once, I say, to do him full justice; ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... such as we found in the vocabularies of former voyages, took great pains to teach us, and were much delighted when we could catch the just pronunciation of a word. For my own part, no language seemed easier to acquire than this; every harsh and sibilant consonant being banished from it, and almost every word ending in a vowel. The only requisite, was a nice ear to distinguish the numerous modifications of the vowels which must naturally occur in a language confined to few consonants, and which, once rightly understood, give ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... other's eyes and there saw the light of undreamed-of hopes. The white world was tearing itself to pieces. White solidarity was riven and shattered. And—fear of white power and respect for white civilization together dropped away like garments outworn. Through the bazaars of Asia ran the sibilant whisper: 'The East will see the West to bed.'" At last comes the inevitable conclusion pleading for a better understanding between England and Germany and for everything else that would make for racial solidarity. The pitiful thing about this book is that ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... great admiration for the gifts of Ned Nestor, and wanted every one to understand what his sentiments were. So he started to open his mouth to say something, when Ned lifted a hand and gave a low sibilant hiss. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... our motions! But, as I said, all this time we were at work; our emissaries gave us enough to do: we knew what spoil the robbers in the March had made, the decree issued in Vienna, the order of the day in Paris, the last word exchanged between the Cardinals, what whispers were sibilant in the Vatican; we mined deeper every day, and longed for the electric stroke which should kindle the spark and send princes and principalities shivered widely into atoms. But, friend, this was not to be. We knew one thing more, too: we knew at last that we also were watched,—when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... again; there was a drumming of hoofs, and man and beast had shot forward from the bank. It seemed an appreciable time before they came down amidst the fern, and then Miss Deringham drew in her breath with a little sibilant sigh. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... leader spoke. He addressed his sibilant words to Greca, though his stony eyes were ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... given place to a series of swishing whistles, merging together into a sound as of water falling, only less regular, more sibilant. Occasionally there was the rending burst of a shell, and at intervals came the swinging detonations of the three guns. In the dugout, except for two men who snored loudly, ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... the pine forests, Elizabeth's bright, speaking face seemed to move before him like a will o' the wisp; even in the rustle of the summer breeze in the leaves he could hear her voice, with its odd breaks and sibilant pauses, so curiously sweet to his ear. "I am possessed," he would say to himself—"I am possessed!" and indeed with all his strength of will he was powerless to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... bed was only a few yards below when, at the last sharp twist in the descent, the still air vibrated with a sibilant rattle. Slade's pony snorted and jumped sideways, leaving Lennon a clear view of the big diamond-back rattlesnake that lay coiled in the middle of the trail. The gaping jaws of the angry snake and the peculiar billowing of its body so fixed Lennon's gaze that ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... area, haste evident in their spinning wheels and hunched drivers. The movement was like a scurry of ants. Rick watched, taking in everything. He didn't even notice when the massive door was swung shut, closing against its airtight cushion with a sibilant hiss. ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... but, at that moment, from up the aisle sounded a sibilant "S-s-s-s!" They turned to see a somewhat untidy fluff of red hair above a ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... Shuffle (cards) miksi, enmiksi—igi. Shuffle (prevaricate) cxikani. Shun eviti. Shut fermi. Shutter, window fenestra kovrilo. Shuttle naveto. Shy timeta, hontema. Shyness timeteco, honteco. Si (music) B. Si (flat) Bes. Sibilant sibla, sibla sono. Sick (ill) malsana. Sick vomema. Sicken malsanigxi. Sickle rikoltilo. Sickly malsanema. Side flanko. Sideboard telermeblo. Side face profilo. Siege siegxo. Sieve ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... sibilant sound as of many suppressed sighs of relief when Heinrich walked into the cutting room, but no man grinned or gave more than a curt nod of greeting—for the forbidding eye of Louis Ersten glared fiercely upon them. He strode across to the table held ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... to be understood as French or English z, not in its German use. Strictly speaking, this "z" (intervocalic -s-) was not voiced but was a soft voiceless sound, a sibilant intermediate between our s and z. In modern North German it has become voiced to z. It is important not to confound this s—z with the voiceless intervocalic s that soon arose from the older lisped ss. In Modern German (aside ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... of old, the world is encircled in the coils of a vast serpent; and the name of the serpent is Gossip. Wherever man is, there may you hear its sibilant whisper, and its foul spawn squirm and sting and poison in nests of hidden noisomeness, myriad as the spores of corruption in a putrefying carcass, varying in size from some hydra-headed infamy endangering whole nations and even ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... with serpentine deliberation, he coiled his great folds slowly, slowly, with sinuous curves, round the girl's soft arm till he reached her neck in long, winding convolutions. There he held up his face, and trilled his swift, sibilant tongue once more with evident pleasure. He knew his place. He was perfectly at home at once with the pretty, olive-skinned lady. His master ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... is scarcely allowable in prose, though instances of it occur: as, 'Moses' minister.' Josh., i, 1. 'Phinehas' wife.' 1 Sam., iv, 19. 'Festus came into Felix' room.' Acts, xxiv, 27. It was done in prose evidently to avoid the recurrence of a sibilant sound at the end of two following syllables; but this may as readily be obviated by using the preposition of, which is now commonly substituted for the possessive case in most instances."—Churchill's New Gram., p. 215. In Scott's Bible, Philadelphia, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... away into a peace indescribable, unlike anything she had ever known before, she heard a woman's voice, hushed to a sibilant whisper, remark, "My, Nap! You're too smart to be ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... with a sharp, imperious gesture; so rapid that the silken drapery about her arm makes a swooping sound as she lifts her hand. The sibilant French syllables hiss through her teeth as she utters them, and seem better fitted to her mood and to herself than the familiar English she ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... he said, his voice low, sibilant, menacing. "I have laid my plans, and shall pursue them with a complete detachment. Others may suffer—so shall I. I have practically reached the limit of my resources. In a month or less I shall be penniless. What money I could scrape together I devoted to the furtherance of this ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... succession of the sibilant sounds, John's brown eyes twinkled brightly, and about his mouth came crinkly, telltale ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... evergreens in dream voices, pansy-soft to the touch. The slow-swaying evergreens rocked to a rhythm old as Eternity, Druid priests standing guard over the sacrament of love and night. From the purpling Valley came the sibilant hush of the River. Somewhere, from the branches below the Ridge, a water thrush gurgled a last joyous note that rippled liquid ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... for you," he said at length, in a sibilant whisper. "They've had that letter of yours at home quite a long time now—ever since yesterday ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... restaurant for supper after the theatre, for smart Madrid is gay at night, and there is as much dancing and fun there, on a smaller scale of course, as there is in the West End. The pretty dresses, the laughter, the sibilant whispers, and the claw-hammer coat are the same in Madrid and Bucharest as in London or Paris, or any other capital. The hour of midnight is the same hour of relaxation when even judges smile after their day upon the bench, and ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... observe an alteration in the language spoken; it had become less sibilant, and more guttural; and, when addressing each other, the speakers used the Spanish title of courtesy usted, or your worthiness, instead of the Portuguese high flowing vossem se, or your lordship. This is the result of constant communication with the natives ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... sure effect of my announcement came in a quick exclamation from Wright, a sibilant intake of breath, that did not seem to denote surprise so much as certainty. Wright might have emitted a curse ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... my fellow watcher said, interrupting his whispered and sibilant devotions, and turning to me, as it seemed, unwillingly. "Have you not heard it before? Every evening since the death he has played it at midnight in memory of Alresca." Then ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... mental pictures that so long as she lived would ever be recurring. She saw the moonlit waters, the black shadow of the proa, the moon-fire that ran down the far edge of the bellying sail, the silent natives: no sound except the slapping of the outrigger and the low sibilant murmur of water falling away from the sides—and the beating of ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... to observe that at the will of a master it can be sublimely sonorous, terribly sharp, diabolically guttural and sibilant, and sweet and harmonious to a remarkable degree. What more sublimely sonorous than certain hymns of Taliesin; more sharp and clashing than certain lines of Gwalchmai and Dafydd Benfras, describing battles; more diabolically grating than the Drunkard's Choke-pear by Rhys Goch, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... language were two different beings—as Sir Lucien was aware. Now, as the one-eyed Chinaman resumed his seat and the one-eyed raven sank into slumber, Pyne suddenly spoke in Chinese, a tongue which he understood as it is understood by few Englishmen; that strange, sibilant speech which is alien from all Western conceptions of oral intercourse as the Chinese institutions and ideals are alien from those of the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the potted plants which flanked each row of tables; the hot stillness of the noon gave way to the sibilant murmur of the cocoanut palms whose bases were lapped by the quickening ripples. The breaking of the withering calm was the signal for departure to office and field. The veranda cleared rapidly. Bronner, watching the three planters, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... moment, "forward! Are you afraid? you know I promised your wife to bring you safe home." Thus her voice keeps ringing through the din, her white armour gleams. "Sus! Sus!" the bold cry is almost audible, sibilant, whistling amid the whistling ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... to Helene. Mother Fetu had ceased whining on his entrance, but kept up a sibilant wheeze, like that of a child in pain. She had understood at once that the doctor and her benefactress were known to one another; and her eyes never left them, but travelled from one to the other, while her wrinkled face showed ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... brother, with watchful eyes, Piercing, shameless, and indiscreet, With ears wide open for soft replies And sounds that are sibilant and sweet! With light approach (not a lynx so still), With figure meanly invisible, With threatening voice and iron will, And shrill demands or he'll "go ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... own heart, Tessa," and then Maoni, who sat smoking a cigarette in a corner of the room, discreetly turned her back as certain sibilant sounds were frequently repeated for ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... paid my debt to the McKayes," she declared, and in her calm voice there was a sibilant little note of passion. "Indeed, I have a slight credit-balance due me, and though Mrs. McKaye and her daughters cannot bring themselves to the point of acknowledging this indebtedness, I must insist upon collecting it. In view of the justice of my claim, however, I cannot ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... of the alphabet, which is called a sibilant, because it makes a hissing sound like a ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... accordingly. She had the street laid knee-deep with straw; and the knocker put by with Mr. Bowls's plate. She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day; and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours. When anybody entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, that it frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could not look without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the latter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside. They seemed to lighten in the dark (for ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the wings of night, was sharp with the fragrance of heather and the sea. One fancied how it would surge through the dim aisles of cathedral-like forests, ruffling the plumage of drowsy birds, stirring the surface of some dark pool, where the trout still slept, and making sibilant music among the ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... out in tufts beneath the faded, greenish kerchief that was soiled with scurf; despite the shouts and the disputes of the gamblers she did not so much as blink; only from time to time she would give a prolonged snore, which, at the start was sibilant, but ended in a rasping snort. At her side Paloma, huddled on the floor near Valencia, held a tot of three or four in her arms,—a pale, delicate creature who blinked incessantly,—to whom she was ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the road and enter a stable where two beautiful old grey carriage horses are being prepared by one of the farm hands for our inspection, to a continuous accompaniment of sibilant ostler language. They have evidently been running wild in the park for some time; each white coat is stained with mud, and burrs stick tenaciously to their long tails. An attendant at the farm is rubbing them down, talking to them, and making them generally ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... blossoming curtain, alive with the minute, multitudinous, swift-moving, glittering forms, some nobler form will be hidden in a hole or fissure in the wall. Here on many a night I have listened to the sibilant screech of the white owl and the brown owl's ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... A deep unhappiness possessed him, an appalling loneliness that sometimes descended on him in crowds. Even Fanny, the thought of his children, could not banish it. Above the drum he thought he could hear the sibilant dissatisfaction of the throng striving for an eternity of youth. The glass about the porch, blotted with night, was icy cold, but it was hot within; the steam pipes were heated to their full capacity, and the women's painted and powdered faces were streaked—their assumption ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... through the spaces between the rocks that causes these intonations, and in their confused sonorities he distinguishes voices, as if the air were speaking. They are low and insinuating, a kind of sibilant utterance: ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... rapturously, "the polonaise! When you hear it, does there not recur to you some dream of bygone happy hours, the sibilant murmur of fragrant night winds through the crisp foliage, the faint call of Diana's horn from the woodlands, moon-fairies dancing on the spider-webs, the glint of the dew on the roses, the far-off music of the surges tossing impotently on the sands, the forgetfulness ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... judge from appearances, not a soul had been near it. But I noticed that, while the almost ripe fruit was abundant, there was scarce any that had taken on the final tinge and flavor. Then I began to be aware of faint, sibilant noises about me, and, glancing up, I saw that the ground was already "pre-empted" by a company of cedar-birds, who, naturally enough, were not a little indignant at my poaching thus on their preserves. They showed so much concern ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... Anticipative Visage, of an osseous and ogreish Aspect, gleamed lividly forth therefrom, as the Apparition appeared to Look and Listen through the Mist at one end of the Bridge for the welcome Sight of Disaster, the much desired Sound of Doom. A shrill and sibilant Metallic Shriek seemed to cleave the Shadows into which the Spectre gazed; a Violent Vibratory Pulsation, as of thudding iron nails threshing upon a resonant steel floor, seemed to heat the Roadway, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... at the word, having heard the sibilant whisper. She likewise stared at the rusty-coated gentleman who had just passed the gate, having come from the main entrance of ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... melodious tones of voice, as is done in recitativo, or in chaunting, it must depend on the speaker, not on the writer: for though words may be selected which are less harsh than others, that is, which have fewer sudden stops or abrupt consonants amongst the vowels, or with fewer sibilant letters, yet this does not constitute melody, which consists of agreeable successions of notes referrable to the gamut; or harmony, which consists of agreeable combinations of them. If the Chinese language has many words of similar ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... it in all pleasant and solitary places; and in our afternoon rambles we have listened, underneath its boughs, to the plaintive note of the Green Warbler, who selects it for his abode, and who has caught a melancholy tone from the winds that from immemorial time have tuned to soft music its long sibilant leaves. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the speaker was Girasole. He had heard the sibilant sounds of the whispering, and, knowing that Minnie could not speak Italian, it had struck him as being a very singular thing that she should be whispering. Had her sister joined her? He thought he would go up and see. So he went up softly, and the whispering still went on. He ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... drew a quick, sibilant breath, and turned, planting his back against the door and ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... j in jest is spelt with the single sign j, whilst the compound sibilant sound in chest is spelt with ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... was introduced. Two of them spoke neither French nor English, but the third man spoke French fluently. He had, by the way, a somewhat peculiar accent, different from that to which I was accustomed in the Turks. It was softer, more sibilant, and impressed me as that of a man who was accustomed to speak Italian. He was a good-looking chap, about my height and build, and were it not for his brown skin, one would not have regarded him as a Turk. One side of his face was deeply scarred with a sword-cut, but, ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... would only smile," they used to exclaim in sibilant whispers, as they passed on the way to the laundry. "If he'd come in an' joke while ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... away from the lake, Willet leading and Tayoga bringing up the rear. It was hard and painful work for Grosvenor, but again he succeeded in advancing without noise, and he began to think they would elude the vigilance of the savage scouts, when a sibilant whisper from Willet warned them to fall flat again. His command was just in time as a rifle cracked in the bushes ahead of them, and Grosvenor distinctly heard the bullet as it hissed over their heads. Willet threw his rifle to his shoulder but quickly took it down again. The Indian who had fired ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... unaware of the inside facts, it would have been evident that Kingham Manor was throwing its weight about a bit tonight. Lights shone in the windows, music was in the air, and as I drew nearer my ear detected the sibilant shuffling of the feet of butlers, footmen, chauffeurs, parlourmaids, housemaids, tweenies and, I have no doubt, cooks, who were busily treading the measure. I suppose you couldn't sum it up much better than by saying that there was a sound of ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... manners of the people everywhere still reveal the nature of the old discipline. The strangest fact is that the old-fashioned manners appear natural rather than acquired, instinctive rather than made by training. The bow,—the sibilant in drawing of the breath which accompanies the prostration, and is practised also in praying to the gods,—the position of the hands upon the floor in the moment of greeting or of farewell,—the way of sitting ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... a peculiar, quaint, little, chatty, sibilant, hissing, whistling chuckle, there emerged from a regular cave that he, or an ant-bear, or some other burrower had constructed under an ancient bush, a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... the ground was soft, and muddy, was a writhing, twisting, tangled mass of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... manner of the man. It seemed to him that both were eager to turn back. Giant boulders, carved to grotesque and ghostly shapes by a million years' wind and water, reared themselves aloft and threw shadows in the moonlight. The wind, caught in the gulch, rose and fell in unearthly, sibilant sounds. If ever fiends from below walk the earth, this time and place was a fitting one for them. Jack curved a hand around his mouth, and emitted a strange, mournful, low cry, which might have been the scream of a ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... smoky little seven-pounder guns were soon to meet their master. Away up on the distant hillside, a long thousand yards beyond their own furthest range, there was a sudden bright flash. No smoke, only the throb of flame, and then the long sibilant scream of the shell, and the thud as it buried itself in the ground under a limber. Such judgment of range would have delighted the most martinet of inspectors at Okehampton. Bang came another, and another, and another, right ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the clear-eyed day, night was presently here, with mystery and doubt and dark presage. The voice of Hoho-hebee Falls seemed to him louder, full of strange, uncomprehended meanings, and insistent iteration. Vague echoes were elicited. Sometimes in a seeming pause he could catch their lisping sibilant tones repeating, repeating—what? As the darkness encroached yet more heavily upon the cataract, the sense of its unseen motion so close at hand oppressed his very soul; it gave an idea of the swift gathering of shifting invisible ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... blue-flannel dressing gown, and in and out of the spare room with sibilant whispers of anxiety, had, for once, more thoughts than words; her words were only, "I've always expected it!" But her thoughts would have filled volumes! Mrs. Newbolt had put her hair in order for the night, and now her crimping pins made ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the Lhari—the old one, whom Bart had seen on the escalator—looked long and hard at him. When they spoke Universal, their voices were sibilant, but not nearly ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... an inch or so, the better to hear what was going on, but try as he would he could not budge the covering. The murmur of voices went on for a few minutes longer, and then he heard the soft, light pad of feet on the floor below; sibilant, penetrating whispers; a suppressed feminine ejaculation followed by the low laugh of a man, a laugh that might well have been described as ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... down at the giant who was slowly lifting himself from his knees, with his clear-cut face upturned; and the hollows, vibrant with silence, caught her whispered words and multiplied the sound to a sibilant wail. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... his belonging to so highly musical a family. But he was never accused of not being noisy enough, while we have one bird who, though he is classed with the oscines, passes his life in almost unbroken silence. Of course I refer to the waxwing, or cedar-bird, whose faint, sibilant whisper can scarcely be thought to contradict the foregoing description. By what strange freak he has lapsed into this ghostly habit, nobody knows. I make no account of the insinuation that he gave up music because it hindered his success in cherry-stealing. He likes cherries, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... Under my fingers: cold, cold and gleaming, Arrowy in the darkness, rippling, dripping— All things are rain.... Myself, this lighted room, What are we but a murmurous pool of rain?... The slow arpeggios of it, liquid, sibilant, Thrill and thrill in the dark. World-deep I lie Under a sky of rain. Thus lies the sea-shell Under the rustling twilight of the sea; No gods remember it, no understanding Cleaves the long darkness ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... her to bring her mother and wake the kid or I'll yell. I've got to hear the little beggar talk." As Philip turned toward the door he flung after him in a sibilant whisper: "Wait! Maybe you know ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... some little distance, and again heard, more than once, the same peculiar sibilant sound, as of something flying past them with great velocity; but they saw nothing, and could not account for the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... course, it could only be Mrs. Lewis, as she at once said, in a honey-sweet voice, and with what seemed to me a foreign accent; but then I had never heard the Southern accent, which is full of music, and seems somehow to avoid the sibilant tone as well as the nasal drawl characteristic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... into the bushes, and were received by a veritable rain of stones and spears. Not an enemy was in sight. On all sides they heard the snapping sound of the slings, the whistling of the stones, the sibilant hiss of the spears that at every step fell in increasing numbers, but they could not see whence they came, and no whisper or rustle of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... word had evoked it, a storm of rifle bullets swept through the car, smashing windows, breaking the remaining gas globes and splintering the wood-work. Again and again the flashes leaped out of the surrounding shadows and the air was sibilant with whining missiles. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... taken my last look; with the Jesuits of the French Mission I had exchanged farewells, and before me beamed the sun of promise as he sped towards the Occident. Loveliness glowed around me. I saw fertile fields, riant vegetation, strange trees—I heard the cry of cricket and pee-wit, and sibilant sound of many insects, all of which seemed to tell me, "At last you are started." What could I do but lift my face toward the pure-glowing sky, and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the open and seated himself upon a piece of mossy rock where he could gaze in the direction where he had last seen his visitor. But it was all dull and misty now. There was the distant murmur of the great fall, the sharp, sibilant chirrup of crickets. The great planet which had seemed like a friend to him before had risen from behind the distant mountain, and there was a peculiar sweet, warm perfume in the air that made him feel ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... Close the emergency—" Then a gluey mass cut across my mouth, and, as though carried on huge soft springs, I was hurried away, with the sibilant, whispering sounds louder and closer than ever. With me, as nearly as I could judge, went every man who had not been on duty in ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... sleeping,' he said, in the craftily-qualified tone of the experienced one who thoroughly understands the difference in a time of danger between the carefully subdued tone and the penetrating, sibilant ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy |
