"Sibilant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, and sunk ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... explanation. In Hebrew the word might have been borrowed from Persian, but the Sanskrit word parade{s}a, if it existed at all in Persian, would have been paradaesa, the s being a guttural, not a dental sibilant. Such a compound, however, does not exist in Persian, and therefore the Sanskrit word parade{s}a could not have reached Hebrew ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... 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 ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... 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
... Jason catch a syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... I am," 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 ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... anniversary. They were having the Crowd to dinner, downtown, that evening. Cora thought the Shoreham rooms beautiful, though she took care not to let the room-clerk know she thought so. Ray, always a silent, inarticulate man, was so wordless that Cora took him to task for it in a sibilant aside. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... for —"id:s E"; for all the Greek alphabets known to us bear traces of the endeavour to distinguish them otherwise and more precisely. Already in very early times two such proposals of change must have been made, each of which found a field for its diffusion. In the one case they employed for the sibilant—for which the Phoenician alphabet furnished two signs, the fourteenth ( —"id://") for —"id:sh" and the eighteenth (—"id:E") for —"id:s" —not the latter, which was in sound the more suitable, but the former; and such was in earlier times the mode ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 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
... sibilant warning of his presence, and in a moment the corner of the tent moved aside, and he saw Stella's bright eyes looking into his. He motioned her to come out, and the flap was gently ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... belongs to the poor only of this world—those simple souls who never have any secret to hide, either from each other or from heaven, and of whom Ruskin nobly said, 'These are our holiest.' I do not know what words her heart is murmuring: I hear only at moments that soft sibilant sound, made by gently drawing the breath through the lips, which among this kind people is a token ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... to expugn, My friend, Such magic-minted conjurings: The brought breeze fainted soon, And then the sense of seamews' wings, And the shore's sibilant tune. ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... 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 rest of the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... 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; then, without ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... broken English, in vivid French, or sibilant Tahitian, Lovaina issued her orders to the girls, shouted maledictions at the cook, or talked with all who came. Through that porch flowed all the scandal of the South Seas—tales of hurricanes and waterspouts, of shipwrecks, of accidents, of lucky deals in pearls ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... there?" she cried, yet not too loudly, because her woman's instinct warned her to be wary. The shutters were flung open, and the young soldier stepped flamboyantly into the room. "I am here, cara, cara mia!" he cried. "I, Vibrato Adagio!" With a sibilant cry she fell into his out-stretched arms. "Mio, mio," she echoed in ecstasy, "I am yours and you are mine!" So lightly was the first stepping-stone passed on her reckless path of immorality and vice. Her fickle heart soon tired of the debonair Vibrato, and in a ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... had the faculty of going to sleep anywhere and any time opportunity offered. She now leaned comfortably against the wall beside the sink, her eyes closed and her mind oblivious to her surroundings, and dimly hearing through her dreams that sibilant call: ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... modern poetic canons as to local color, it is quite impossible to push realism so far as to repeat the horrible blasphemy mingled with oaths which this news, apparently so unexciting, brought from the huge mouth of Minoret-Levrault; his shrill voice grew sibilant, and his face took on the appearance of what people ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... by a bold speech in support of an unpopular measure or an unpopular man. But here the hisser is not so safe, nor the hissee—to coin a convenient word—so defenceless. The orator is not hampered by the studied words of a written part: he has the right of free speech, and he may retort upon his sibilant surrounders. Macready records that on one occasion, when Sheil was hissed, he "extorted the applause of his assailants by observing to them, 'You may hiss, but you cannot sting.'" Even finer was the retort of Coleridge under similar circumstances: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... quality so strange as to be startling. To see that broad chest, that robust and muscular frame, one would expect to hear rolling waves of sound, roarings as of thunder. But not so. The voice is shrill and sibilant, yet with a sonority so powerful that it vibrates on the eardrums and penetrates to the ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... table sat a drunken man in the dress of a sailor, with a red beard, all over coal-dust and tar. Hiccupping every minute, he was droning a song all made up of broken and incoherent words, strangely sibilant and guttural sounds. He ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Like the ghost of a great wind it moaned and sighed about us. Little by little a new note crept in—a sibilant, metallic note as of a tense sheet of silk drawn rapidly over a ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... out. It was very cool and dusky. The lights of the town twinkled out below them, and the prairie bluffs behind them were dark and sibilant. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... this most stilly night are almost wholly of the faintly pulsing sea—sibilant and soft. Twice have the big-eyed stone plovers piped demoniacally. Once there were flutterings among the nutmeg pigeons in the star-proof jungle of the crowded inlet to the south. A cockatoo has shrieked out in dismay at some grim nightmare of a ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... 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
... 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
... in a rapid, sibilant whisper, leaning forward so as to bring her eyes directly before Mrs. Thayer's face, and the effect was electrical. Mrs. Thayer struggled for a moment, as if she would rise, and then fell back and burst into tears. ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... close against the softness of her arm, and at their touch the arm trembled, and from far away came the quick, sibilant ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... 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, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... 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, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the muffled conversation in the kitchen resembled the resonant humming of bees, and again, when it became animated, it sounded like the distant cackling of geese. Then there would come a pause; and it would begin again with sibilant whispers, and end in a chorus of dry laughter that somehow suggested the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... earliest period z as well as x; afier the symbol for p came Zade (@), which was a strong palatal s, though in name it corresponds to the Greek zera: while lastly Shin (@ follows rhe symbol for r, and was an sh-sound. The Greek name for the sibilant (sigma) may simply mean the hissing letter and be a derivative from sizo; many authorities, however, hold that it is a corruption of the Phoenician Samech. Unfortunately, it is not clear how many sibilants ere distinguished ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... mechanically and quite deliberately he took aim—making assurance doubly sure throughout what seemed an age made sibilant by the singing past his head of the infuriated ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... I 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 ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... another warble in the same locality, and experience a like difficulty in getting a good view of the author of it. It is quite a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds well amid the old trees. In the upland woods of beech and maple it is a more familiar sound than in these solitudes. On taking the bird in hand, one cannot help exclaiming, "How beautiful!" So tiny and elegant, the smallest of the warblers; a delicate blue back, with ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... began to 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 ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the terminal vowel may be elided in rapid pronunciation, or be dropped, or absorbed in the terminal consonant, generally a nasal). No two consonants can come together without an intervening vowel, except in the case of a nasal, labial or sibilant.[8] No consonant is doubled. Apparent exceptions occur to this last rule where two nasals, two r's or two d's come together through the elision of a vowel or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... at once, and with the sound of my footstep on the floor the low knocking ceased, to be followed immediately by sibilant whispering through the keyhole. ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... A sibilant whisper. Sergeant Tremp muttered something in reply. The trio turned the corner and immediately it seemed they were at the back of the firing shelf where—every so far apart—the figures of riflemen stood waiting for any possible ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... Vergniaud determinedly, "Is always a covert thing. We betray each other in the dark, with silent foot-steps and sibilant voices. We whisper our lies. We concoct our intrigues with carefully closed doors. I did so. I was a priest of the Roman Church as I am now; it would never have done for a priest to be a social sinner! I therefore took every precaution to hide my fault;—but out of my lie ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... a brew of his finest tea. He was loquacious. He tried one subject after another, interjecting protestations of his friendship for Saul. Donaldson heard nothing but the even voice and the sibilant dialect. He seemed chained to that one torturing picture. Even the prospect of finding the boy and so ending the suspense which had battered Miss Arsdale's nerves for so long brought little relief. He never could be needed again as he had been needed then. He might even ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... 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 with ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... ebb'd with the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok, Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems, Was seiz'd ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... sergeant, "now thin—Lanky—du yu' shtay right here wid th' harses. Kape yu're head—even if ye du hear shootin'. Du not shtir from here onless ye get ordhers from wan av us." Turning to the others he continued in a sibilant hiss, "Yu, Reddy, shlip along th' edge av th' brush here, an' over th' river-bank onto th' shingle. Kape well down an' thread careful ontil ye come forninst th' back winder. Thin pop yu're head up ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... he remained rooted to the spot, his ears strained to catch a repetition of the fancied sound. It had been only a faint murmur; he might have been mistaken ... yes, there it was again, a sort of choked, sibilant whisper coming from the adjoining room. Hardly had he made sure of it when there fell on his ears a small crash, sharp, as of some object dropped on the parquet. It was followed by a smothered exclamation in a man's ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell |
