"Sibilant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pine woods I heard the soughing of the tree-tops. They were entreating the rain to come—to come quickly. How well I knew that soft, sibilant invocation! Higher up the few tufts of bunch grass that remained rustled in anticipation. On the top of the mountain, in ordinary years a sure sign of a coming storm, floated a veil ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... bowed respectfully 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 ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... 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)
... morning (I quote from his essay): "Beneath in the water the little fishes darted about the boat; above the little birds twittered in the branches; while off on a sunny log in the pond the soft, sibilant croak of the mud-turtle was heard on the shore." If we could happen upon the mud-turtle mad with love, I am sure we should find that he had a voice—a "soft, sibilant croak," ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... officers, and grace, grace and grace. The dash with which the partners rush forward, the clinking and clattering of spurs as heel clashes with heel in mid air, punctuating the staccato of the music, the loud thud of boots striking the ground, followed by their sibilant slide along the polished floor, then the swift springs and sudden bounds, the whirling gyrations and dizzy evolutions, the graceful genuflections and quick embraces, and all the other intricate and maddening movements ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... demurred and in the interval that followed I had a sense of crisis. Nay, I fancied more; upon hearing Emily's brief protest Mrs. Drainger slowly clenched her hands, and the movement was as though she were steadily bending her daughter's will to her purpose. At length, with the same sibilant in-taking of the breath I had observed before, Emily turned and swept through the door, her face unusually yellow, the little spots of rouge on her ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 voice, brief ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... shallow slope of sand, leaning against a rock, with her elbow resting on its flat surface and her book propped up in front of her. Gradually the rhythmic rise and fall of the waves on the shore had lulled her into slumber—the plop as they broke in eddies of creaming foam, and then the sibilant hush-sh-sh—like a long-drawn sigh—as the water receded only to gather itself afresh into ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... wrote 'Py-Khan', a 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
... evening the news came. Anne was sitting at her open window, for the time forgetful of the woes of examinations and the cares of the world, as she drank in the beauty of the summer dusk, sweet-scented with flower breaths from the garden below and sibilant and rustling from the stir of poplars. The eastern sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink from the reflection of the west, and Anne was wondering dreamily if the spirit of color looked like that, when she saw ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sounds—I have 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 ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... smile," they used to exclaim in sibilant whispers, as they passed on the way to the laundry. "If he'd come in an' ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... to hasten its progress. I shook it impatiently to make it go faster. The great empty church looked cold and lonely. The little group of spectators only added to the loneliness of the scene. An occasional cough resounded harshly amid the universal stillness. The sibilant sounds of whispers struck sharply and ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... again, a sibilant sound, as if out of a throat through clenched teeth. It had a mocking ring. It was impossible to say whence it ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... 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
... 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 underbrush ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... slowly on hands and knees 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
... 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, and the darkness absorbed the outlines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... a violent whisper, so strong and sibilant that every word was audible to the watcher ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... ran down the yard to the wood shed. It was so intensely cold that the snow did not yield to his tread, but gave out quick sibilant sounds. It seemed to him like a whispering multitude called up by his footsteps, and as if ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... reedy notes of the robin, 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, and then dashes down to the waters, which hold it closely and soon drown it out of sight. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... What low, sibilant sound is that? And then what confused, angry words from the tribunal? He turns to his friends, his eyes ablaze with anger, opera-glass in hand. And now again the terrible "Hiss-s-s!" taken up by the other box, and the words repeated loudly and more angrily even than ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... 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
... 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, shake the Bridge, and as it appeared ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... 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. Sigh after—or for sopiri ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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 ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... made up to baffle 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 ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... sound increased. 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 ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... 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
... having once heard it, could ever mistake that singular voice, alternately guttural and sibilant. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... 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
... to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... another—sibilant, clearer, uncannily human. Nicholas had heard, too, for he threw down the tattered deerskin, and went to the other side of the fire. Voices in the tunnel. Nicholas held back the flap and gravely waited there, till one Pymeut after another crawled in. They were the men the Boy had seen at the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... 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 ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 articulation, which yet signify different ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... smoke, As jetted steam, dead clouds awoke And quivered on the Western rim. Then the singing started: dim And sibilant as rime-stiff reeds That whistle as the wind leads. The South whispered hard and sere, The North answered, low and clear; And thunder muffled up like drums Beat, whence the East wind comes. The heavy sky that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... As she passed Elfreda's room she heard her name uttered in a sibilant whisper. Wheeling at the sound, Grace stepped to the stout girl's door. Elfreda drew her in and, closing the door, said nervously: "What do you suppose has happened? I waited and waited for the An—Miss Atkins and she didn't appear, so I went down ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... 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 Edmund's ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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 she kept the curtains closed) ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Ludwigsburg; they raised a shout when they saw their Duke. He bowed, and the Landhofmeisterin also bent her head in dignified salutation. Immediately the shouting ceased, and a low ominous groan went up, intermingled with sibilant hissings. Wilhelmine grew pale, and shot a glance of hatred towards the peasants. His Highness spoke rapidly in a low tone to the cadet who rode at his elbow. The youth galloped back along the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... without a 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 strained and inarticulate ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on—as the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fastened together with wrist- chains and ankle-chains; I hear the entreaties of women tied up for punishment—I hear the sibilant whisk of thongs through the air; I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms; I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the Romans; I hear the tale of the divine life ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... 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
... 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 the ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... 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
... before they recognized him. One by one, then by sixes, then by dozens they grew aware of him; and as that happened they grew silent, until the whole street was more still than a forest. They held their breath, and let it out in sibilant whispers like the voice of a little wind moving among leaves; and he did not speak until they were ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... 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. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... infernal whistle falls on us and we bend like bushes. The shell bursts in the air in front of us, deafening and blinding, and buries us under a horribly sibilant mountain of dark smoke. A climbing soldier has churned the air with his arms and disappeared, hurled into some hole. Shouts have gone up and fallen again like rubbish. While we are looking, through the great black veil that the wind tears from the ground and dismisses into the sky, at the bearers ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... her white hands that clenched themselves in distress. She looked 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
... light before he saw his vacant place. The galleries at the lower end were occupied too, down there, where she had failed to obtain a seat. Yet from all the crowded interior there was no sound but a sibilant whispering; from the passages behind she could hear again the quick bell-note repeat itself as the lobbies were cleared; and from Parliament Square outside once more came the heavy murmur of the crowd that had been ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... seemed something of timidity in the repulsive faces of the waiting creatures, this newcomer was of a different type. He opened flabby thin lips to give one sharp note of command. It was as sibilant as the hissing of a snake. The man with the weapon returned it to a holder at his side; the whole group cringed before the power and authority of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... tent but the girl made no sign of going in. In the silence the sibilant lisp of the ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... 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
... tread of a man impelled her to glance below once more before fleeing to her room. Marlanx was coming toward the verandah. She fled swiftly, pausing at the window to lower the friendly but forgotten umbrella. From below came the sibilant hiss of a man seeking to attract her attention. Once more she stopped to listen. The "hist" was repeated, and then her own name was called softly but imperatively. It was beyond the power of woman to keep from laughing. It struck her as irresistibly funny that the Iron Count should be ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... disappearance of g before v or must come from some other Italic dialect. The symbol G was a new coinage in the 3rd century B.C. The pronunciation of C throughout the period of classical Latin was that of an unvoiced guttural stop (k). In other dialects, however, it had been palatalized to a sibilant before i-sounds some time before the Christian era; e.g. in the Umbrian facia Latin facial. In Latin there is no evidence for the interchange of c with a sibilant earlier than the 6th century A.D. in south Italy and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in 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 not used ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... 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 ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... sibilant murmur ran down the line, and the voice of Sliver Waldron brought it faintly ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... "Now," he whispered, sibilant through the wind, controlling himself, though he was shaking from head to foot, "now to return as we have come. Not a word, not a word till we have this safe in ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... William!" said the prompter in a sibilant whisper. "Don't make so much noise. They can't hear ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... plants do not exist. It is typical, therefore, not of isolated experiments on the part of Nature, but of conditions and processes repeated in similitude wheresoever in the region raw sand heals the wounds inflicted by the sea or the grumbling sea retreats before the sibilant, incessant sand. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... 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
... 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 had not obtained ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... slight aspirate preceding and modifying the sibilant, which is, however, the stronger of the two consonants; e.g. hsing hissing ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... 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 Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... my 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
... with an ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked where the sea-ripples 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, Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the better of me and stifle me, Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the ruin, the sediment, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... song is not especially melodious, but is blithesome, sibilant, and unceasing. Its type is the grass, where the bird makes its home, abounding, multitudinous, the notes nearly all alike and all in the same key, but rapid, swarming, prodigal, showering down as thick and fast as drops of rain in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... interesting to step 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... humorous resentment at this mercenary 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
... 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 ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... baleful dusk, this wail of rain.... But you are nothing! Your pages turn to water 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 with a sword ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... not a word," said Bourignard, whose voice he recognized. The man was elegantly dressed; he wore the order of the Golden-Fleece, and a medal on his coat. "Monsieur," he continued, and his voice was sibilant like that of a hyena, "you increase my efforts against you by having recourse to the police. You will perish, monsieur; it has now become necessary. Do you love Madame Jules? Are you beloved by her? By what right do you trouble her peaceful ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... 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. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... even on the brightest days. To-night the heavens held no lamps aloft to guide us, and soon the darkness folded around us like a garment. I could see neither the driver nor his horses. I could hear only the sibilant whisper of the trees and the creak of our slow wheels ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... rattle! "Who is 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 ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... there was any exchange of sentiments. He had a 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
... when 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 face was deeply scarred with a sword-cut, but, if anything, this did not ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... came in a sibilant whisper too low to be heard by the watchful overseer. "Monakatocka never forgets a friend. Some ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... 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 ship? Then, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... 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 hisses cut the ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... 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
... who seemed to 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 laugh again in ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... 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
... the foot of the scaffold when her head fell. To the last he had seen that noble countenance preserve its immutable calm, and in the hush that followed the sibilant fall of the great knife ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... for the sibilant assurance before putting back the receiver. He went round to the garage himself. This was the first time he had driven Joan in his car. It might ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... 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 ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... discovered during the animal's lifetime. Frequently, the abnormal sounds indicate progressive destruction; but, at other times, portions of the lungs that have been totally impervious to air, become the seat of sibilant rales, and gradually, a healthy respiratory murmur proves that, by absorption of the materials which have been plugging the tissues of the lungs, resolution is fast advancing. Some very remarkable cases of this description have ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... then," said the sibilant tones. "Now, in the matter of the loan to an English newspaper, you have arranged ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... 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
... fumes of vodka, tobacco-smoke, tar, and some acrid odor. Facing Gavrilo at another 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 was unmistakably not ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Masson tells us, "Milton's general practice is not to double the s; thus, Nereus wrinkled look, Glaucus spell. The necessities of metre would naturally constrain to such forms. In a possessive followed by the word sake or the word side, dislike to [of] the double sibilant makes us sometimes drop the inflection. In addition to 'for righteousness' sake' such phrases as 'for thy name sake' and 'for mercy sake,' are allowed to pass; bedside is normal and riverside nearly so." The necessities of metre need not be taken into account with a ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... 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
... religious silence. His voice has a 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 farthest corners of ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... wind passing 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
... the early 'Forties, the proprietor, to his amazement, heard one of his oysters whistling—a continuous shrill little whistle, doubtless through a hole in its shell. The fact was at once noised abroad, and crowds visited his shop to listen to the sibilant mollusc, which not only whistled, but, it was said with some truth, drew the town as effectively as old Drury herself, on the other side of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... put off her 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
... Angel and his gasping prey, stepped two, anointed with the chrism of the Priesthood of Cure; and undismayed by the strident, sibilant, fitful breath that distorted the blue lips of the victim, they parried the sweep of the scythe of death, with the tiny, glittering steel blade surgery cunningly fashions; and through its silver canula, tracheotomy recalled ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... 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 high ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... talked, and not once did her listener interrupt. Her words were spoken in that sibilant whisper that is louder than ordinary speech, and not one of them was lost. When she had finished, she rose and demanded, laying her hand upon ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... expressed it in their fragrance just as the peach and other trees did in their flowers. And it was also expressed in the new sound they gave out to the wind. The change was really wonderful when the rows on rows of immensely tall trees which for months had talked and cried in that strange sibilant language, rising to shrieks when a gale was blowing, now gave out a larger volume of sound, more continuous, softer, deeper, and like the wash of the sea ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... There was a 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 ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... 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 ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... a fine sibilant chorus audible in the sod, and in the dust of the road, and in the porous plowed fields. Every grain of soil and every root and rootlet purrs in satisfaction, Because something more than water comes down when it rains; you cannot produce this effect by simple water; the good-will of the elements, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... was a dim, branching place which we knew was the orchard; and on our left, among sibilant spruces and firs, was the old, whitewashed house—from which presently a light gleamed through an open door, and Aunt Janet, a big, bustling, sonsy woman, with full-blown peony cheeks, came ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... moment they listened to the infinitesimal noises of the night, straining their ears in the stillness. The river wound past them with a faint, sibilant sound like a child chuckling in its sleep; an owl hooted somewhere in the far-off sanctuary of the trees. Betty drew her breath with a little sigh that was no louder than the rustle of the bat's wings overhead. The match burning on the grass beside them ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... 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 beast—a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... 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 ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... somewhere below a gutter gurgled foolishly. Far away in the corridor a gleam of yellow light shone from the open door of an isolation room where a nurse was watching by a patient dying of gangrene. Two comrades who had been to the movies at the Gaumont Palace near the Place Clichy began to talk in sibilant whispers of the evening's entertainment, and one of them said, "That war film was a corker; did you spot the big cuss throwing the grenades?" "Yuh, damn good," answered the other pulling his shirt over his head. It was a strange crew that inhabited these ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... them. To 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 ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey |
