"Sibilant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... articulation is not musical to unaccustomed organs. As in popular parlance the 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) these be birds (vi. 121); Nazalu al-Wazirayn ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 crackling of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 he only ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... place the packet of letters, and taking them out, she drew another sheet of paper along with them, which she read with wide-opening eyes, then with her pretty lips pursed, she actually whistled, which unmaidenly performance merely gave sibilant expression to her astonishment. Taking both the packet of letters and the sheet of paper with her, she ran swiftly up the stair and along the corridor to the room where the Prince was impatiently ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... back! 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 ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... Carlsen 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
... spoken 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. This was a fortunate relief, since she would have fainted if she ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... from the body of the house Sally heard nothing—only the crepitation of rain on the roof and the sibilant splatter of drops trickling from her saturated skirts into the puddle that had formed beneath ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... pressure he stuttered slightly, grinding and whirring over a sibilant like a stalled tire. Upon one occasion that was to be memorable Lilly sat between the brothers, notebook in lap, her head bent to dodge the fusillade of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... japers!" 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 ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... of 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 snake. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... 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 ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... 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
... it is true; but, thank goodness, no longer in numbers. I only lisp a little when any occasion arises to utter sibilant sounds; on such occasions this little girl, the only child of her mother, and she a widow, mimics my infirmity. The widow is silly and laughs nervously, as people with a fine sense of humour laugh in church when a ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... and pushed his boat slowly in on the gravel, a low pr-r-r and a sibilant ripple of water caused him to look behind. A high-bowed, shining mahogany cruiser, seventy feet or more over all, rounded the point and headed into the bay. The smooth sea parted with a whistling ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 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
... world he has dreamed of, peopled by saints and martyrs, where the flowers are quickly woven into crowns and the light streams from the gates of Paradise, and every breeze whispers the sweet sibilant name of Jesus, and there, on the bare but beautiful roads, Christ meets His disciples, or at the convent gate welcomes a traveller, and if He be not there He has but just passed by, and if He has not just passed by He ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... Z is 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 ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... stealthy turning of a key in a lock. Little padding foot-falls, soft as those of some strong, yet dainty, cat-creature crossed the carpet. A whisper of silk came along with them, like the murmur of the breeze in an oak grove on a clear, hot, summer noon, or the sibilant ripple of the sea upon spaces of fine-ribbed, yellow sand. And the impression produced upon Richard was delicious, as of one passing from a close room into the open air. Confusion and exhaustion left him. Energy ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... long drawn and sibilant, which for the last five minutes had been swelling 57 little thoraxes, burst out and filled the space of the lecture hall at the Museum ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... organ, a careless voluntary that stopped short, rambled, began again. They were early, and the lights were only lighted here and there; women, and now and then a man, drifted up the center aisle. Boots cheeped unseen in the arches, sibilant whispers smote the silence, pew-doors creaked, and from far corners of the church violent coughing sounded with muffled reverberations. Mary Lou would have slipped into the very last pew, but Virginia led the way up—up—up—in the ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... of its species. The South Indian bird occurs only in Ceylon and the hills of South-west India; hence Jerdon called this species the Nilgiri or Ghaut black bulbul. Men of science in their wisdom have given the Himalayan bird the sibilant name of Hypsipetes psaroides. The inelegance of the appellation perhaps explains why the bird has been permitted to retain it for quite a long ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... 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 into the heart of the battery. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... with enormous bronze braziers. The Russian officer, and even the Russian sergeant, were agreeably stroked by the contact with all this quiet and seclusion and this old-world air, and they murmured in sibilant ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The chien de race was the 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
... Shudder tremeti. 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 kribrilo. Sift kribri. Sigh ekgxemi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... extended; still without faltering she faced the five men, while the thunder, growing more distant, rolled sullenly eastward, and the midnight rain, pouring from every spout and dripping eave about the house, wrapped the passage in its sibilant hush. Gradually her eyes dominated his, gradually her nobler nature and nobler aim subdued his weaker parts. For she understood now; and he saw that she did, and had he been alone he would have slunk away, and said ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... investment of tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child's shoulders, drew her close. Gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... Frazer." began Fu-Manchu in that indescribable voice, alternating between the sibilant and the guttural, "you were promised a certain fee for your services by my servant who summoned you. It shall be paid and the gift of my personal gratitude be added ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... and a musical passage of two parts, one a clear delicious gurgle, with several other birds I cannot place. To which is join'd, (yes, I just hear it,) one low purr at intervals from some impatient hylas at the pond-edge. The sibilant murmur of a pretty stiff breeze now and then through the trees. Then a poor little dead leaf, long frost-bound, whirls from somewhere up aloft in one wild escaped freedom-spree in space and sunlight, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... rose and fell in alternations of argument that was almost quarrel, narrative that was sometimes diverting, and ribaldry that was never wit, it would seem as if the ruffianism of half Europe had called a conference in that squalid, horrible little inn. Guttural German notes mixed whimsically with sibilant Spanish and flowing Portuguese. Cracked Biscayan—which no Spaniard will allow to be Spanish—jarred upon the suavity of Italian accents, and through the din the heavy steadiness of a Breton voice could be heard asserting itself. Though every man spoke in French, for the ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 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., 1903, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... door 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
... too, fumblingly. "I'd forgotten about it," she said. The heavy crape fell about her shoulders, mercifully hiding the swollen, discolored face. She went down the stairs. There was a little stir, a swaying toward her, a sibilant murmur of sympathy from the crowded sitting-room as she passed through to the parlor where Rabbi Thalmann stood waiting, prayer book in hand, in front of that which was covered with flowers. Fanny sat down. A feeling of unreality was strong upon her. Doctor ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... display. "He ought to be here," the younger man declared, consulting his watch. As he spoke Rhoda saw the barouche draw up before the house. She had a glimpse of a figure at Gerrit Ammidon's side in extravagantly brilliant satins; there was a sibilant whisper of rich materials in the hall, and the master entered the library with a ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... were flying overhead with a queer, sibilant noise. Somewhere in the darkness there was a steady rattle in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... a low, 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 ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... first 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 with the natives of Spain, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... insult," said she, in a sibilant voice, "to talk to me as you are doing, when you have just told me that you love another woman, and are going to ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... fearless defiance in the faces of her captors. Her contemptuous arraignment, ending with an allusion to the affair on the campus of the previous March, was highly displeasing to her masked listeners. Angry murmurs arose from behind masks and several sibilant ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... floated 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 human. I ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... break; nor might he have said it was in motion or of any depth. A sound came from the direction not unlike that of a sibilant wind. Presently out of the perspective, which reduced the many to one and all sizes to a level, the line developed into unequal divisions, with intervals between them; about the same time the noise became recognizable as the voices fiercely ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... is Her 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... recognition; but there remained his voice. To dissemble this he had availed himself of the fact that Figaro was a Spaniard. He had known a Spaniard at Louis le Grand who spoke a fluent but most extraordinary French, with a grotesque excess of sibilant sounds. It was an accent that he had often imitated, as youths will imitate characteristics that excite their mirth. Opportunely he had bethought him of that Spanish student, and it was upon his speech that to-night he modelled his own. The audience of Guichen ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... demeanour was regulated so severely that even to-day the 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 ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... the tiled floor; dark pieces of furniture, tables, cabinets, dark and heavy; and tall windows, bare of curtains at this season, opening upon a court—a wide stone-eaved court, planted with fantastic-leaved eucalyptus-trees, in the midst of which a brown old fountain, indefatigable, played its sibilant monotone. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... regain her breath, Fanny turned to Nanny with the usual explanations, only stopping to exclaim over Barney—"Land sakes, Barney, what are you doing here!" A breath and then in sibilant whispers: ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... 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 multitudes, coming and going—who could ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... 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
... grinned between tight-drawn 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 ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... through more ancient ruins, into a cottonwood grove and then on to a sandy flat. Sitting low in my saddle, almost dozing, I revived suddenly at a never-to-be-mistaken B-u-u-z-z-z! The horses recognized it instantly and froze in their tracks. Sibilant, wicked, it sounded again, and then a yellow streak slid across the trail and disappeared under a low bush. We waited, and pretty soon a coffin-shaped head came up and waved slowly to and fro. The Chief shot him with his forty-five and the snake twisted and writhed into the trail, ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... 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, ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... a 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 ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... an enemy," came in a sibilant whisper too low to be heard by the watchful overseer. "Monakatocka never forgets a friend. Some day ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... now, and with a finger at his lips the cook gave us a warning glance. He then laid hold of the rope that was made fast to a shears overhead, swung out, and slid down to the very keelson. Silently, one at a time, we followed. The only sound was our sibilant breathing and the very faint shuffle of feet. Now we could see, almost midway between the hatches, the dim light of a candle and a man at work. While we watched, the man cautiously struck several blows. Was he scuttling ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... 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 ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... 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
... up at once, and with the sound of my footstep on the floor the low knocking ceased, to be followed immediately by sibilant whispering ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... boat quiet in the ebbing bayou, we looked and listened. There were sounds of sibilant dripping in the dim sedges; of alewives jumping by the side of our boat; of a sudden rush of blackbird wings; and of the evening breeze as it freshened in the bending blades. We could see the many rivulets, wine-red now in the sunset light; ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... what you are doing, Louis,' said he, in a sibilant whisper which was as menacing as a serpent's hiss. 'You are deranging my plans, and that is not done ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... long silence... silence broken only by that softly sibilant detonation which belongs most properly to the month of June, but confines itself to no season... to a long, long silence born of and blessed by the gods... until one Percival Sheridan, coming stealthily home from a late ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... 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 ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... appear out of the ground like snails after rain and who might have been part of the undertaker's permanent stock-in-trade. Henrietta hated the mournful looks of these ancient cousins, the shaking of their black beads, their sibilant whisperings, and in their presence she was dry-eyed and rather rude. Aunt Caroline would have laughed at them and their dowdy clothes that smelt of camphor, but it seemed as though no one would ever ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... on account of 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. ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... 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 ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... a light step, a swishing, sibilant, delightful rustling—the caress of sound is the rustling of a well-groomed woman's skirts—and of an afterthought of violets, of a mere reminiscence of orris, all of which came toward him through the dimness of ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... is almost immediately accompanied by a purulent secretion from the bronchi, and the second day does not pass without the characters of pneumonia being completely developed. The respiration is accompanied by a mucous 'rale' which often becomes sibilant. The nasal cavities are filled with a purulent fluid. The dog that coughs violently at the commencement of the disease, employs himself, probably, on the following day, in ejecting, by a forcible expulsion ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... 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, and sunk ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... qualities (as they are called) of impure voice, the Aspirate, the Sibilant, and the Guttural are defined with sufficient clearness, by their names. Though these modes can be appropriately used only occasionally, nevertheless they are of great value to the reader, and the voice should be trained to assume them whenever necessary. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... dragged off his sodden buckskin 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
... slightest hesitation, on her part, before speaking the last name? My lord's eyes fell; an odd expression appeared on his face. He murmured a few last perfunctory words; then—"They'll get him yet. He can't get away," he repeated. The words had a singular, a sibilant sound; he bowed deferentially and strode off, not toward his own chamber, however, but toward the great stairway leading down to ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... in 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 ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... sacrament, sacrilege, salient, salubrious, sardonic, satellite, saturnine, schism, scurrilous, sectarian, secular, sedative, sedentary, seditious, sedulous, segregate, seismograph, senescent, sententious, septuagenarian, sequester, sibilant, similitude, sinecure, sinuous, solicitous, solstice, somnolent, sophisticated, sophistry, sorcery, spasmodic, specious, spirituelle, splenetic, spontaneity, sporadic, spurious, stipend, stipulate, stoical, stricture, stringency, stultify, stupendous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor |
