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Hiss   Listen
noun
Hiss  n.  
1.
A prolonged sound like that letter s, made by forcing out the breath between the tongue and teeth, esp. as a token of disapprobation or contempt. ""Hiss" implies audible friction of breath consonants." "A dismal, universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn."
2.
Any sound resembling that above described; as:
(a)
The noise made by a serpent. "But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue."
(b)
The note of a goose when irritated.
(c)
The noise made by steam escaping through a narrow orifice, or by water falling on a hot stove.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books



... her part, and had learned the miauw, the mew, the hiss, the dash forward, the howl of rage, and the purr to perfection. She had stalked across the stage again and again that day as kitchen cat, each time evoking shrieks of laughter. By her side walked a timorous dog, who looked at the kitchen cat with awe. The dog was purposely made ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... blood, a cry that I never heard from a swan in my life, he rose in the air, his huge wings extended—like a tortured phantom, Sime; I can never forget it—six feet clear of the water. The uncanny wail became a stifled hiss, and sending up a perfect fountain of water—I was deluged—the poor old king-swan fell, beat the surface ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... began to fall less heavily. Only now and then a great drop fell with a hiss and sputter into the fire; but the wind grew fiercer as the evening waned, and the thunder and pounding of the sea was deafening. The spray dashed higher and higher, quite up to the backs of the men who huddled ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... events, was known, and as he stood up on the floor of the court a swift and regular movement like a ripple of water passed through the throng. They leant forward to get a clearer view of him and for a moment there was a hiss ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... they could speak he was gone. The tone of his voice lingering upon their ears was like a hiss. It was a ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... onward. A bluejay cried out, "jay, jay!" with startling loudness, and seemingly enjoyed his pent-up excitement. A few steps forward at slow, careful stalk, and then behind him he heard a loud whistling hiss. Instantly turning he found himself face to face with a great, splendid buck in the short blue coat. There not thirty yards away he stood, the creature he had been stalking so long, in plain view now, broadside on. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... surge and shock of that frigid sea rushed upon me. I felt the swirl and hiss of the broken wave higher about me before it sank away down whatever dreadful strand it owned. My life ebbed with it, draining low. My enemy spoke the ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... sank within her. The season had been dry, and she knew the path by instinct; but the storm and the darkness seemed like twin enemies determined to bar her advance. She felt that Nature was her foe, even as man had been, and as Rehoboth would be when it knew of her return. Why did the rain hiss, and dash its cold and stinging showers in her face? Why did it saturate her thin skirts so that they, in chill folds, wrapped her wasted frame and clung cruelly to her weary limbs to stay her onward travel? And why that strange, ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... reverence, is scarcely to be wondered at. The ancient Mexicans regarded the boa as sacred; they viewed its actions with religious horror; they crouched beneath the fiery glances of its eyes; they trembled as they listened to its long-drawn hiss, and from various signs and movements predicted the fate of tribes or individuals, or drew conclusions of guilt or innocence. The supreme idol was represented encircled and guarded by sculptured serpents, before which ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... lads, on such a text as this "We sadly miss old CHARLEY's line;" But were we mute, Neptune would hiss His sons degenerate off the brine. Old "CHARLEY" spins his yarns no more! He's dead, as Scrooge declared old Marley. What then? Wake up, from shore to shore, And—send your ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various

... much hurry as though the great event were fixed for a short hour ahead. Norburn was about the streets, looking more cheerful than he had done for a long while—the scent of battle was in his nostrils—and enjoying the luxury of prevailing on his friends not to hiss Mr. Puttock when that worthy stepped across from his warehouse to ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... there is another, her tears would be shed For him who lays far in an ocean bed; In hours that it pains me to think of now, She has twin'd these locks and kiss'd this brow— In this hair she has wreathed shall the sea-snake hiss? The brow she has press'd shall the cold wave kiss? For the sake of that bright one that wails for me, Bury me not in the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... high and mighty body of gentlemen apprentices and else who swagger in good broadcloth clothes and brass buttons in the theatre, by not leaving his bed of sickness for the amusement of their high mightinesses, that they had resolved to hiss and drive him off the stage. Those who were most prompt to condemn the insolence and indecency of the band alluded to, thought that such a design would be an outrage too unjust, too stupid even for such persons as their high mightinesses; and, therefore, refused ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... the galloping horse. Whitley was fascinated and moved slightly so that he could peep over the rock. A low hiss from Jake fell upon his ear like the warning hiss of a serpent, and half turning, he saw the rifle pointing full at him. He nodded his head, and placing his finger upon his lips to indicate that he understood, turned his face toward the road again, just as the horse and his rider came ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... door swung shut with a bang as Paddy and Capps, followed by Kennedy and myself, crept into the air-lock. Paddy turned on a valve, and compressed air from the tunnel began to rush in with a hiss as of escaping steam. Pound after pound to the square inch the pressure slowly rose until I felt sure the drums of my ears would burst. Then the hissing noise began to dwindle down to a wheeze, and then it stopped all of a sudden. That meant that the air-pressure ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... to ashes! burnt to ashes! The flames dart their serpent tongues through the nursery window. I cannot quit thee, my Elizabeth! I cannot lay down our Edmund! Oh, these flames! They persecute, they enthral me; they curl round my temples; they hiss upon my brain; they taunt me with their fierce, foul voices; they carp at me, they wither me, they consume me, throwing back to me a little of life to roll and suffer in, with their fangs upon me. Ask me, my lord, the things you wish to know from me: I may answer them; I am now ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... tossed in his bed, and begged fruitlessly for water. At last the room grew silent, the tired watchers dozed in their chairs, the doctor nodded and nodded, bringing his eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, looking around for his wig; while the sick man, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... are some stage-struck gentlemen whom nothing can convince of their total unfitness for the stage. You may hiss them night after night, you may present them with bouquets of carrots, and wreaths of cabbage leaves and onions, and leather medals, and services of tin plate; and if you find them "insensible to kindness," you ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... a low hiss warned him he was trespassing, and clutching Terry's collar, he stood rigid, while the whip-like shadow of death writhed across a strip of moonlight—and disappeared. There was life,—of a sort, in Chitor. So Roy trod warily as he passed from room to room; dread ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... offended with the Roman laws and lawyers. One of the Barbarians, after the effectual precautions of cutting out the tongue of an advocate, and sewing up his mouth, observed, with much satisfaction, that the viper could no longer hiss. Florus, iv. 12.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... cheer them, from the vault of heav'n, Save the vivid lightning's flash,— Pealing the deep ton'd thunder crash, Glancing upon the tow'ring wave, Above the seaman's yawning grave;— Glaring into that dark abyss, Where hideous monsters dart and hiss, And ship wreck'd seamen, far from home. Toss amid the briny foam; Till the proud wave, with one stern sweep, Buries the secrets of the deep; Revealing far, on upper land, A lawless bandits' wand'ring band, With sword and rapier, stain'd with blood, Still ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... opponents. Steele had on this, as on other occasions, shown more zeal than taste or judgment. The honest citizens who marched under the orders of Sir Gibby, as he was facetiously called, probably knew better when to buy and when to sell stock than when to clap and when to hiss at a play, and incurred some ridicule by making the hypocritical Sempronius their favorite, and by giving to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed on the temperate eloquence of Cato. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... disappeared amid the dark cypress-trees of the hunting park. The immense enclosure stretching from the edge of the morasses that bordered the walls of Babylon far into the country, soon echoed with the shouts of the attendants beating the coverts for game, the baying of the dogs, the hiss of lances and whir of arrows. Bright-hued birds, roused by the tumult, flew wildly hither and thither, now and then the superb plumage of a bird of paradise flashing like a jewel among the dense foliage of ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... the promise of plenty. While here, the "Calloo-calloo," is remarkably shy, very rarely venturing out of the seclusion of the thickest jungle, and warning off intruders with a curious note of alarm, half purr, half hiss. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... was beginning to get drowsy when my husband pressed my arm, and his voice, changed to a hiss, said: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... the leaves of the proud old trees of Beckley Court hiss as he sweeps beneath them? What has suddenly cut him short? Is he diminished in stature? Are the lackeys sneering? The storm that has passed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... know not what you mean by that: but I am sure, Caesar fell down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the Players in the theatre, I ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... the clock struck nine—ten—eleven. Against the closely curtained windows the rain still fell with a softened hiss, the coals broke, flamed up, died down to a rosy glow. Still Julia sat, sunk in her deep ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... far towards the blue zenith. From the other end of the ship, they could hear the plaudits that accompanied an impromptu athletic tournament; but the inhabitants of the nearest chairs were reading or dozing, and the deck about them was very still. Only the throbbing of the mighty screw and the hiss of the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... exhorts, "kissing, dalliance, all speeches, tokens, love-letters, and the like," or as Castilio, lib. 4. to converse with them, hear them speak, or sing, (tolerabilius est audire basiliscum sibilantem, thou hadst better hear, saith [5640]Cyprian, a serpent hiss) [5641]"those amiable smiles, admirable graces, and sweet ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... eyes round the room, old memories seemed to awaken in me. The fire, after making the green wood hiss, sent a flame up the chimney, and the whole room was illumined with a bright though unsteady light, which gave all the objects a weird, ambiguous appearance. Blaireau rose, turned his back to the fire and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... all happened so quickly there was no time for Mrs. Thornton to think. She saw Willis hasten away and enter the front door of the car they had been occupying; at the same instant she became aware of the approaching train. There was a shrill, angry hiss, and the freight swung into the cut with a terrible roar, then came a crashing of glass and breaking of timbers. The engineer had opened the whistle valve with such a jerk that it had stuck fast, and the whistle did ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... Stygian Gods, in a voice compounded of all discords, and altogether alien to human organs. It resembles at once the barking of a dog and the howl of a wolf; it consists of the hooting of the screech-owl, the yelling of a ravenous wild beast, and the fearful hiss of a serpent. It borrows somewhat from the roar of tempestuous waves, the hollow rushing of the winds among the branches of the forest, and the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... of campaign, but the baronet is a man to whom the most direct way is always the most natural. He walked into the room, and as he did so Barrymore sprang up from the window with a sharp hiss of his breath and stood, livid and trembling, before us. His dark eyes, glaring out of the white mask of his face, were full of horror and astonishment as he gazed ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... several things, and is a part of all chalk, marble, and the shells of eggs or of shell-fish. The easiest way to make it is by pouring muriatic or sulphuric acid on chalk or marble. The marble or chalk begins to hiss or bubble, and you can collect the bubbles in the same way that you can oxygen. The gas made by the candle in burning, and which also is got out of the chalk and marble, is called carbonic acid. It puts out a light in a moment; it kills any animal that breathes it, and it is really poisonous ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... to overcome was their desire to aid me in matters that I could manage better alone. If some one whispered and I tapped a pencil, instantly half the children in the room would turn around and utter the hiss with which they invoke silence, or else they would begin to scold the offender in the vernacular. Such acts led, of course, to unutterable confusion, and I had no little trouble in putting a ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... shining afar up the westward right of way, and throwing into heavier shade, by force of contrast, every object outside its beams. In the solemn stillness of nature in those high levels, almost the only sound was the soft hiss of escaping steam from the cylinder-cocks or an occasional rumble from the boiler. Even murmured words seemed audible and intelligible sixty feet away, and twice big Ben Tillson, the engineer of 705, had pricked up his ears ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... was now rapidly approaching the burning steamer. Amid the roar of the flames and the hiss of the sea against heated iron was heard the thin whine of the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... the faggot was burning rapidly away, and fiery brands began to drop, to fall with a hiss into the underground torrent, some to become extinct on the moment, while others glided out of sight on the surface, giving a good idea of the extent ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... A hiss from Kensky brought them round. He beckoned them through the door by which they had made their original entry to the room, and pointed to the light. He gripped ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... carriage of Madame de (I forget the name), in the Queen's livery, was stopped by the populace, under a belief that it was Madame de Polignac, whom they would have insulted; the Queen, going to the theatre at Versailles with Madame de Polignac, was received with a general hiss. The King, long in the habit of drowning his cares in wine, plunges deeper and deeper. The Queen cries, but sins on. The Count d'Artois is detested, and Monsieur, the general favorite. The Archbishop of Toulouse is made minister ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... art devised. Meantime, the bold Ulysses loosed the steeds, Which, to each other rein'd, he drove abroad, 590 Smiting them with his bow (for of the scourge He thought not in the chariot-seat secured) And as he went, hiss'd, warning Diomede. But he, projecting still some hardier deed, Stood doubtful, whether by the pole to draw 595 The chariot thence, laden with gorgeous arms, Or whether heaving it on high, to bear The burthen off, or whether yet to take More Thracian lives; when him with ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... hiss like Medusa's head in wrath, and who was, I think, fonder of the sound than any other of our poets. Indeed, in compounds of the kind we always make a distinction wholly independent of the doubled s. Nobody would boggle at mountainside; no one would ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... the light of the great lantern at their prow they saw the white seas hiss past as they drove shorewards beneath bare masts. For they dared ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... theatre, pray, and what? 'Tis the world, and the part which I play is that of master and author; while for actors I have the whole of you—popes, kings, and people; and the cord by which I move you all is—fear! Comedian, say you? But he who would dare to hiss me or applaud should be made of different stuff from you, Signor Chiaramonti! Know you not well that you would still be merely a poor cure but for me, and that if I did not wear a serious air when I salute you, France would ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... dark stairway they came to a door, which opened under the garret stairs, and Mary was startled by a voice which seemed to be almost over her head, and which, between a sneer and a hiss, called out, "See where the immaculate Miss ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... moment, before Mayo, his thoughts busy with his new danger of suffocation, could voice warning or had grasped the full import of the dialogue, the chisel's edge plugged through the planking. Instantly there was a hiss like escaping steam. Mayo yelled an oath and set his hands against the mate, pushing him violently away. The industrious Mr. Speed had been devoting his attention to the planking instead ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... bigger than sparrows, fly down upon the turf, reddened with strawberries; green parrots with yellow heads, purple woodpeckers, cardinals red as fire, clamber up to the very tops of the cypress-trees; humming-birds sparkle upon the jessamine of the Floridas; and bird- catching serpents hiss while suspended to the domes of the woods, where they swing about like creepers themselves.... All here ... is sound and motion.... When a breeze happens to animate these solitudes, to swing these floating ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... and far more terrible sound. It was such a sound as the sea might have made if it had rushed through a thousand crevices in the rock. It was the sound of the thousands of tons of sand as they forced their way from the dense mass above. And over the hiss as of the sea was the harsh crack of great timbers splitting ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... discover the chief of the plot of the play by the reading of along letter, which was so long and some things (the people being set already to think too long) so unnecessary that they frequently begun to laugh, and to hiss twenty times, that, had it not been for the King's being there, they had certainly hissed it off the stage. But I must confess that, as my Lord Barkeley says behind me, the having of that long letter was a thing so absurd, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... A faint hiss, as of warning, issued from the carmine lips of the Chinese woman. Then the window closed noiselessly, and Chinatown, having paid not the slightest heed to the incident, pattered about its multifarious businesses, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... at the end of the train, watch in hand, and at the moment when the hands indicated the appointed hour he leisurely climbed aboard and pulled the whistle cord. A sharp, penetrating hiss of escaping air answered the pull, and the train moved out of the great train-shed in its race against time. It was all so easy and comfortable that the passengers never thought of the work and study that ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... will, Fairfax. Hoot! Hiss me off the stage! I am no longer worthy of the confraternity of honest, bold, free and successful fellows. I am dwindling into a whining, submissive, crouching, very humble, yes if you please, no thank ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... a word or sound expressing emotion only such as a shout, a groan, a hiss, a sob, or the like, such as Oh, ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton

... fire welcomes me when the long day's task is done. After I have gazed long into its depths, I close my eyes to rest them, opening them again, with a start, whenever a coal shifts its place, or some belated little tongue of flame spurts forth with a hiss.... Vaguely I liken myself to the watchman one sees by night in London, wherever a road is up, huddled half-awake in his tiny cabin of wood, with a cresset of live coal before him.... I have come down ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... puffed out with soft popping noises and Mac heard the last vestige of air hiss out of the chamber. He found the hatchway too tight for comfort and had a moment of fear when his tool pack caught in the orifice, wedging him neatly. He could hear Logan and Ruiz through his earphones, ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing

... among their guards dreamed that anything more dangerous than thoughts could or would come. And yet, within two minutes from the time he was spread upon his back and left alone, old Two Knives heard inside the lodge a low, warning hiss. ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard

... space at times, and he saw the spreading cone of luminous gas behind them like the wake of a great ship in a phosphorescent sea. The hiss and threshing of many wings came unceasingly. Once he swung close to another body clad like his own and, like him, enmeshed in a net. And he saw in the light of the luminiferous air the girl's wide, staring eyes. Then she was gone, and all about ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... 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 revealed the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... grew nearer and plainer. They still seemed deserted, although the eyes of many foes might be watching the advancing khaki-clad troops. Behind came the thunder of the big guns, and the shells screamed in the air overhead. It was past 6 a.m. Suddenly the hiss of a shell sounded marvellously close, there was a metallic clang, and a cloud of dust arose some hundred yards in front. It was a Boer shrapnel, and the ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... weet-weet or kangaroo-rat can be thrown is truly astonishing. I have seen an Australian stand at one side of Kennington Oval and throw the kangaroo rat completely across it." (Width of Kensington Oval not stated.) "It darts through the air with the sharp and menacing hiss of a rifle-ball, its greatest height from the ground being some seven or eight feet . . . . . . When properly thrown it looks just like a living animal leaping along . . . . . . Its movements have a wonderful resemblance to the long leaps ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... a slight warning hiss, a sibilant breath, scarcely more, and the five shifting a little, grasped their rifles in such a manner that they could be pushed forward at once, and listened with all their ears. Henry had heard a light footfall, and ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... thoroughly crest-fallen—and not without reason. I had been giving a few lectures among the working men, on various literary and social subjects. I found my audience decrease—and those who remained seemed more inclined to hiss than to applaud me. In vain I ranted and quoted poetry, often more violently than my own opinions justified. My words touched no responsive chord in my hearers' hearts; they had ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... is now. I reflected that as the car was ever rising into a rarer atmosphere, my only hope of salvation lay in calling for help, and that as the paralysis was gaining on my whole body, not a moment was to be lost. I shouted with all my strength; but beyond a sort of hiss, not a sound escaped my lips. The profound silence of the car now struck me in a new light. Had Gazen and Miss Carmichael not committed the same blunder, and suffered a like fate? Perhaps even Carmichael himself had been equally careless, and the flying ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... ruffian nearest him, with a hiss of rage, drew a knife, with which he made a wicked slash at Hal. Hal did not see the movement, being closely pressed elsewhere, but Chester, with a sudden cry, leaped forward and seized the hand holding ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes

... several demonstrations of feeling in court, but at this statement by the lawyer there was a general hiss. The schoolmaster hesitated ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... 44: "Now every neck is bent, for the surface of the waters disturbed. Then with a heave, a hiss, and a surge of bubbles, the seething milk mounts to the top of the vessel. Before it has had time to run down the blackened sides, the air resounds with the sudden joyous cry of 'Pongol, oh Pongol, S[u]rya, S[u]rya, oh Pongol,' The word Pongol means "boiling," ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... and eat grapes forever, without working for them; but when Walter looked up innocently and said, "then why didn't you stay there, Pietro?" Pietro would drop him as if he had been a red-hot potatoe, and hiss something in Italian from between his teeth, that poor little Walter could not begin to understand; but as he was a pretty sensible little boy, he always took himself off till Pietro felt better natured, and asked him ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... from an overflowing pail that stood outside "The Bended Thumb," the clear drip, drip of the water could be heard falling slowly into the white cobbles, and close at hand was the gentle lap of the sea, as it ran up the little shingly beach and then dragged slowly back again with a soft, reluctant hiss. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... wretched woman, raving already in delirium, behold the spectres that her madness feared, beckoning to her in the lurid glare, or gliding in and out among the wild fires that whirled in fantastic gambols around and overhead! Nearer and nearer yet the rolling flame advances; it commences to hiss and murmur in its progress; it wreathes itself about the chairs and tables, and laps up the little pool of brandy spilled from the forgotten flask; it plays about her feet, and creeps lazily amid the folds of her gown, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... prisoner. Every one in the court turned about, and gazed with steadfast hatred on the man in the dock. From the jury-box where the twelve sworn brethren were whispering together, a sound in the general stillness like a prolonged "hiss-s-s!" was heard; and then, in answer to the challenge of the officer, "How say you, gentlemen of the jury, guilty or not guilty?" came in a melancholy voice ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... wild snatches between the volleying gusts; while overhead the sails are booming like artillery, as the spilling lines strain to get the grip. 'Now then, starboard watch, up with your sail and give the larboard watch a dressing down!' Yo—ho! Yo—hay! Yo—ho—oh! Up she goes! A hiss, a crash, a deafening thud, and a gigantic wave curls overhead and batters down the toiling men, who hang on for their lives and struggle for a foothold. 'Up with you!' yells the mate, directly the tangled coil of yellow-clad humanity emerges ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... he was sure. You see, he quite forgot the fact that the brightness of day is to Hooty what the blackness of night is to him. So, because Hooty would simply sit still and hiss and snap his bill, instead of trying to catch his tormentors or flying away, Blacky called him stupid. He felt sure that Hooty would stay right where he was now, and he hoped that Mrs. Hooty would lose her temper and leave ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess

... the boat. You get ready a bow painter and a stern rope, and the boat, like a bolt set free, flies to the land. Very probably she takes a 'shooter,' that is, gets her nose down and her stern and rudder high into the air, and, all hands sitting aft, she is carried along amidst the hiss and burst of the very crest of the galloping billow. Fortunate are they if this wave holds the boat till she is thrown high up the beach, broadside on, for at the last minute the helm must be put up or ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... about it, except some Indian curiosities, a water-color or two, the photographs of the family, and the fresh flowers in the vases. But the sun shone in, there was a great sense of peace and stillness, and beside a little wood-fire, which burned gently and did not hiss or crackle as it might have done elsewhere, sat a lovely old lady, whose fresh and peaceful and kindly face seemed the centre from which all the home look and comfort streamed. She was knitting a long silk stocking, a volume of Mudie's lay on her knee, and ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... the sergeant and corporal conversed in whispers. This was exceedingly tantalising to the friends above! The hiss of their voices could be distinctly heard. Eskiwin's long arm could almost have reached them with a lance. Presently the corporal rode slowly away, became dim in the fog, and finally disappeared, while the sergeant remained immoveable ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... call the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss." —Byron's Childe Harold, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... glance at the pretty, fearless brunette and her strange companion. "They know at once whether people like them or not, and they govern themselves accordingly. I suppose it's instinct. When they see you're afraid of them, they spring and hiss; but when they see you take to them by nature, they make themselves perfectly at home in a moment. They don't wait to be asked. They've no false modesty. Well, then, you see," he went on, drawing imaginary lines with his ticket on the sketch he was holding up, "I shall work in Sardanapalus ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... hiss color heightened. "Nothing, I assure you! It's just a matter of curiosity with me. I should like to know who she is—that's all! The ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... was dark with a swither of foam and spray blown off the waves in the thickness of a fog. The heavy bows of the smack beat into the seas with a thud and a hiss—the thud of a steam-hammer, the hiss of molten iron plunged into water; the waves raced exultingly up to the bows from windward, and roared angrily away in a spume of foam from the ship's keel to lee; and ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... I saw the black storm come Nearer, minute after minute; Its thunder made the cataracts dumb; With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum, It neared as if the Devil ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... by a bloated toad. The amphibian surveyed him solemnly, but never moved. A low hiss whistled through the grass. He crouched in terror while four feet of grass-snake undulated by. A shrewmouse broke cover in front of him, followed by its mate. The air resounded with shrill defiant squeaks as the two bunchy velvet balls rolled over ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... toads, and had scales or knobs on their backs like those of crocodiles, plated onto the skin, or stuck into it, as part of the skin. They are very slow in motion; and when a man comes nigh them they will stand still and hiss, not endeavouring to get away. Their livers are also spotted black and yellow: and the body when opened has a very unsavoury smell. I did never see such ugly creatures anywhere but here. The iguanas I have observed to be very good meat: and I have often eaten of them ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... came out upon the window-sill and dropped lightly to the ground. The other mounted upon the window-sill, and turned round upon his knees; there was a gleam of light within the building, a flicker and a hiss, and then with a mighty roar the flame swept through it as if following the trail of some combustible. Here and there it surged, down the aisles and over the desks, white and clear, showing in sharpest silhouette every curve and ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... waters!—from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... two feet of the hideous reptile. All of a sudden the beast whirled itself into a coil, its eyes fastened with hideous malignity on poor Gallon, and with its head erect it emitted the most awful hiss I have heard proceed from the mouth of ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock

... were turned into one, Florrie; you would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself (not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a little through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time, and sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, with throats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can sing ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the superintendent finished speaking when a sharp hiss sounded from an open window. Then another and ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock

... strange, but I do not feel frightened and depressed any more, and the people don't boo and hiss at me. Is it not dreadful the way ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... the trench. At that instant a single rifle sounded, and the Canadians hurled themselves down upon the ground. Their bodies had hardly touched it when from a line six hundred yards long there came one furious glare of rifle fire, with a hiss like water on a red-hot plate, of speeding bullets. In that terrible red light the men as they lay and scraped desperately for cover could see the heads of the Boers pop up and down, and the fringe of rifle barrels quiver and gleam. How the regiment, lying helpless under this ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... mines; the few trees are stunted and blasted; no birds are to be seen, except a few smoky sparrows; and for miles on miles a black waste spreads around, where furnaces continually smoke, steam-engines thud and hiss, and long chains clank, while blind gin-horses walk their doleful round. From time to time you pass a cluster of deserted roofless cottages of dingiest brick, half-swallowed up in sinking pits or ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... lizards crawl; Huge dogs of Tibet bark in yonder grove, Here parrots prate, there cats make cruel love; In some fair island will we turn to grass (With the queen's leave) her elephant and ass. Giants from Africa shall guard the glades, Where hiss our snakes, where sport our Tartar maids; Or, wanting these, from Charlotte Hayes we bring Damsels, alike adroit to sport and sting. Now to our lawns of dalliance and delight, Join we the groves of horror and affright; This to achieve no foreign aids we try,— Thy gibbets, Bagshot! shall ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... rather a deep one, when measured. The fears were fairly hot. There were no noticeable signs of any tears in the papers, so far, but one could guess there would be a deep extinguishing bath of them ready to hiss presently, if all went well, and our affairs had uninterrupted development under the usual clever guides. And we had the guides. I could see that. The papers were loud with the inspirations of friends of ours who had not missed a single lesson ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... at the wall when it first struck—the rush along ever growing higher—the great jet of snow-white spray some forty feet above you—and the "noise of many waters," the roar, the hiss, the "shrieking" among the shingle as it fell head over heels at your feet. I watched if it threw the big stones at the wall; but it never ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... proceedings of this day. During the following week hopes were entertained that the Parliament might be induced to vote a peace establishment of thirty thousand men. But these hopes were delusive. The hum with which William's speech had been received, and the hiss which had drowned the voice of Seymour, had been misunderstood. The Commons were indeed warmly attached to the King's person and government, and quick to resent any disrespectful mention of his name. But the members who were disposed to let ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... because the natural timidity of woman would, he predicted, set back all hope of militant progress for the workers of the world. The "Antis" listened with a somewhat strained and puzzled attention, and a group of working-women, out on strike, and sitting in the balcony, gave an angry hiss, which was instantly suppressed. The last speaker, Mr. Reuben Rice, was one of those wandering scribes who travel through the West and write up suffrage from a Pullman-car window, and as he exposed the weaknesses, the failures ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... do, let me die poisoned with some venomous hiss, and never live to look as high as the two-penny room ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... going out in all weathers, that she troubled me with no expostulation. My spirits began to rise the moment I was in the wind. Keen, and cold, and unsparing, it swept through the leafless branches around me, with a different hiss for every tree that bent, and swayed, and tossed in its torrent. I made my way to the gate and out upon the road, and then, turning to the right, away from the village, I sought a kind of common, open and treeless, the nearest approach to a moor that there was in the county, I believe, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... the theatres have got up a plot," continued the manager; "they will even hiss the piece, but I have made arrangements to defeat their kind intentions. I have squared the men in their pay; they will make a muddle of it. A couple of city men yonder have taken a hundred tickets apiece to secure a triumph for Florine and Coralie, and given them ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... whispered in the dog's ear, keeping her eyes fixed on the man, who had now nearly finished trimming his stick. "Rob! hiss-s-s-s!" ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton

... advanced money in making and repairing turnpike-roads? What was to become of coach-makers and harness-makers, coach-masters and coachmen, inn-keepers, horse-breeders, and horse-dealers? Was the house aware of the smoke and the noise, the hiss and the whirl, which locomotive engines, passing at the rate of 10 or 12 miles an hour, would occasion? Neither the cattle ploughing in the fields or grazing in the meadows could behold them without dismay. Iron would be raised in price 100 per ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... forest; sometimes out in the burning open beneath the clear blue of the sky, between flat plains of open country; sometimes on the breast of wide lakes; sometimes between high banks, where the boat went dizzily fast and the waters passed the paddles with a sharp hiss as we rushed on; and each of those moments was a delight to me, and even Suzee seemed affected by the beauty and the poetry of the river, for she leant against me silent and absorbed and her eyes grew soft and dreaming as the visions on the golden banks swept by; fields of sugar-cane and maguey, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... in my visits here (which were pretty numerous) as the uncommonly hard and cruel character of the audience, who resent the slightest defect, take nothing good- humouredly, seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses as little ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... of the duchess de Bouillon and the duc de Nevers, produced, in 1677, his tragedy of Ph['e]dre in opposition to that of Racine. The duke even tried to hiss down Racine's play, but the public judgment was more powerful than the duke; and, while it pronounced decidedly for Racine's chef d'oeuvre, it had no tolerance ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... in silence up the valley, Maud walking beside him with all her old lightness. Howard thought he had never seen anything more beautiful. They were out of the wind now, but could hear it hiss in ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... under the ill-trimmed lamp, washed it down with whisky, and then smoked. From the foreside of the bulkhead came an uninterrupted hammering and clinking, and now and then a hiss of steam. ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... His metallic voice sank to a hiss. "I employ no force. You shall yield to me your heart as a love offering. Of such motives as jealousy and revenge you know me incapable. What I do, I do with a purpose. That compassion of yours shall be a lever to cast you into my arms. Your hatred ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... song ceased and the singer turned. Another second and the dagger would have been in his breast. But at the fateful moment of time the stroke was arrested by Morgan's hand. The would-be assassin turned with the hiss and wriggle of a viper; his strength was astonishing, and, ere Morgan was aware, the sharp stab entered his own arm. He loosened his grip with an exclamation of pain. The spy darted like a black shadow into the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... There were cries of terror, a hurrying of feet, a near panic as bomb succeeded bomb. Many of us had been disciplined to war conditions, had dodged bombs at the Somme and Vimy Ridge, dodged them when shrapnel was spraying about us and machine-gun and rifle bullets made the air hiss on every side; but this attack in the heart of a great city was not without its terrifying aspect. After having escaped death on the battle-field, it would be horrible to have to meet it in the tumbling ruins of a crushed ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson

... to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep, although now and then one would writhe and lift its head and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside among ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... of radiance along the ghostly shore line. With no marks of guidance on either bank, the wheelsman felt his uncertain passage upward, advancing so cautiously progress was scarcely noticeable, and I could frequently distinguish the voice of the anxious captain from the upper deck, above the hiss of the steam, as he called some hasty warning. In all probability we should have eventually been compelled to tie up against the bank, and await daylight, but for the disappearance of the heavy masses of clouds overhead, and the ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... their feet, the sky between the trees was like damp blotting-paper, and the smell that had been only faintly in the air before was now heavy around them, blown in thick gusts as the wind moved through the trees. Shrapnel now could be distinctly heard at no great distance, with its hiss, its snap of sound, and sometimes rifle-shots like the crack of a ball on a cricket bat broke through the thickets. They separated, spreading like beaters in a long line: "Soon," Trenchard told me, "I was ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... penetrated to St. Charles Street, came out with a bid. The owner was a seedy man with a straw-colored, drunkard's mustache. He was leaning against the body of Mrs. Russell's barouche (seized for sale), and those about him shrank away as from smallpox. His hundred-dollar offer was followed by a hiss. What followed next Stephen will always remember. When Judge Whipple drew himself up to his full six feet, that was a warning to those that knew him. As he doubled the bid, the words came out with the aggressive distinctness of a man who through a long life has been used to opposition. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of Lagroscino, the favorite composer of the day, were enraged when they heard that the next new work was to be from an obscure youth, and they determined to hiss the performance. So great, however, was the delight of the public with the freshness and beauty of Piccini's music, that even those who came to condemn remained to applaud. The reputation of the composer went ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... indicate a tempestuous evening. But the storm which threatened to rage without was unnoticed.—Though the drops fell heavily; though gleams of lightning flashed by, followed by the report of distant thunder, and the winds began to hiss and whistle among the trees of the neighbouring cemetery, yet all these external signs of elementary tumult were as nothing to the deep, solemn footsteps of the Red Man. There seemed to be no end ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various

... paper, sir. I haf heard dis from de chauffeur of de Biedermanns next door. He wass at de hotel himself wid hiss shentleman lars' night at de dance. Dey won't put dat ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... Revenge! 'Twas this that gave, oh! Ellinor, to thee A strength to bear thy matchless misery: Though the hot blood ran boiling in her brain, And rolled a tide of fire through every vein, Though many a rushing voice of blighted bliss Struck on her mental ears, like adders' hiss; That hope gave gloomy fierceness to her eye, Dash'd down the tear, repress'd the unloading sigh; Fixed her wan quivering lip, and steeled her breast To crush the hearts that ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... I have never known him to be quick, sharp, or loud with the cows. When things go wrong, the crooning ceases. When it is resumed, all is well in the cow world. The other man, French, who is an excellent milker, and who stands well with the cows, has a half hiss, half whistle, such as English stable-boys use, except that it runs up and down five notes and is lost at each end. The cows like it and seem to admire French for his accomplishment even more than Judson, for they ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... 'kase he'z gittin' mighty 'feerd dat Tarr'pin gwine fin' out his fedders wuz gone. So he go 'way off inter de bushes an' whustle, an' sho' nuff, 'twuz jes' lak Mistah Tarr'pin's voice. Den Tarr'pin try ter whustle back, but lo, beholst you! his voice clean gone, nuttin' lef' but a li'l hiss, an' hit done stay dat-a-way clean ontwel dis day. 'Twuz gittin' daylight, an' he look down uv a suddint an' dar he wuz! wid nair' a smidgin' uv a fedder on his back. He feel so bad he go inter de house an' cry ontwel his eyes wuz so raid dat dey ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... he did not find some animal fast in one of these man-made snares. Each new victim acted differently, according to the characteristics of its kind. Breed found a badger in a trap and the animal ceased his struggle long enough to wrinkle his nose and hiss at Breed with a thick snakelike sound. The badger's forepaws were more than twice the size of his hind feet, and were fitted with heavy two-inch claws, while those of the hind feet measured but half an inch. He was caught by one hind foot, leaving the powerful spading forks of the ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... the way over now. The half-globe showed, within its milky interior, a hideously distorted landscape. The light had taken on a hard, brittle appearance and its hiss had risen to a scream. The machine thundered steadily with a suggestion of ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak

... adding its voice to the roar of traffic at Victoria Station. There came the pounding hiss of escaping steam. The crowd pressed close to the rails and peered down the foggy platform. A train had stopped, and the engine was panting close to the gate-rail. A few men in khaki were alighting from ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway

... don't let them carry me off body and soul! Ah, they hiss at me with their venomous tongues! Yes! yes, they are crawling over me! They are sucking the blood in my brain! Evelyn, come to me! I will not send you away again. Oh, take me out of this fire! I'm burning! Oh God, ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... admit, Skinner," Easton said to his comrade, who had come across from his own company to have a chat with him, "that this is more unpleasant than I had expected. This lying here listening to the angry hiss of the bullets is certainly trying; at least I own that I feel ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... closely enough, and at such an angle, that Smith looked eagerly for a reflection. However, the water was exceedingly rough, and only a confused brownish blur could be made out. Once he caught a queer sound above the noise of the water; a shrill hiss, with a harsh whine at the end. "Just like some kind of suction apparatus," ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... said I, "the language of the place of despair is exhausted in describing and denouncing the South. If a man among us lifts up his voice to say good things about Southerners, one universal hiss goes up from all your conventions and anti-slavery prints. He may be seeking the same end with you, namely, the peaceful removal of slavery, with due regard to the highest good of all concerned; but let him utter a word in arrest of your unqualified ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... Bryant's face, exclaiming, "You'll get what's coming to you! Like your damned dog!" His face was entirely viperish. His finger came within an inch of the engineer's nose. His words carried a furious hiss. ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... the pylon, and Menes put some fuel under a brass kettle. He blew the flame and soon the water was boiling. On the kettle was a perpendicular spout covered with a heavy stone. When the kettle began to hiss, Menes said, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... burgher they had ambushed; and, last, the pensive Jacques (so very like Mr. Joseph Pennell in bearing and humour) distilling his meridian melancholy into pentameter paragraphs, like any colyumist. A bonfire is quickly kindled, and the hiss and fume of venison collops whiff to us across the blue air. Against that stump—is it a real stump, or only a painted canvas affair from the property man's warehouse?—surely that is a demijohn of ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... malhelpi. Hinderance malhelpo. Hindermost lasta. Hindoo Hindo. Hindrance malhelpo. Hindu Hindo. Hinge cxarniro. Hint proponeti. Hip kokso. Hippodrome hipodromo. Hippopotamus hipopotamo. Hire dungi. Hire, cost of salajro. Hireling salajrulo. His lia, sia. Hiss sibli. Historian historiskribanto. History historio. History, natural naturscienco. Hit frapi. Hit against ektusxegi. Hitch malhelpajxo. Hive abelujo. Ho! ho! Hoard amaso. Hoarfrost prujno. Hoarse rauxka. Hoarseness rauxkigxo. [Error in book: raukigxo] Hoax mistifiki. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... I fired at the shield. And Alan leapt aside. I heard the faint hiss of his Essen, ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings

... were friends in a pond. The Snake taught the Frog to hiss, and the Frog taught the Snake to croak. The Snake would hide in the reeds and croak. The Frogs would say, "Why, there is one of us," and come near. The Snake would then dart at them, and eat all he could seize. The Frog would hide in the reeds ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... have enough: what you possess, That makes your value, be it more or less." What answer would you make to such as these? Why, let them hug their misery if they please, Like the Athenian miser, who was wont To meet men's curses with a hero's front: "Folks hiss me," said he, "but myself I clap When I tell o'er my treasures on my lap." So Tantalus catches at the waves that fly His thirsty palate—Laughing, are you? why? Change but the name, of you the tale is told: You sleep, mouth open, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... who may be looked upon as commander in chief, takes up his station close to the wall which they are repairing, and frequently repeats the beating which I just mentioned, which is instantly answered by a loud hiss from all the labourers within the dome,—those at ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... Johnson's lusty laugh from the front row of a side box gives the signal to the worthy claque, who applaud to an almost dangerous extent, in their zeal for their friend, because there runs a rumour that Cumberland and Ossian Macpherson and Hugh Kelly are getting up a hiss in ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... his strength, quickened his steps. Rod was close beside him now, his eyes ceaselessly searching the chasm wall for signs that would tell him when they were nearing the rift. Suddenly Wabi halted in his tracks and gave a low hiss that stopped them. ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... shed—till, on the other side, one ingot after another was lowered from the truck, and no sooner felt the ground than it became the prey of some unseen force, which drove it swiftly onwards from beneath, to where it leapt with a hiss and crunch into the jaws of the mill. Then out again on the further side, lengthened, and pared, the demon in it already half tamed!—flying as it were from the first mill, only to be caught again in the squeeze of the second, and the third—until at last the quivering ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... behind us, murmuring low, "See the bubbles of light, how they sparkle and dance! I shall live, I shall live!" And his words scarcely died in our ears before, crash upon crash, came the fall of the age-long trees in the forest; and nearer, all near us, through the blazing grasses, the hiss of the serpents, the scream of-the birds, and the bellow and tramp of the herds plunging wild through the billowy red of ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... imperfections: we, afraid to look on the imaginary serpent of envy, painted in men's affections, have ceased to tune any music of mirth to your ears this twelvemonth, thinking that, as it is the nature of the serpent to hiss, so childhood and ignorance would play the gosling, contemning and condemning what they understood not. Their censures we weigh not, whose senses are not yet unswaddled. The little minutes will ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... the gold-rimmed glasses marched behind his company, and in his hand he carried a brutal whip, a veritable cat-o'-nine-tails. When a man stumbled over some hidden tree root he would hiss out "Pig!" or "Clumsy hound!" And Dennis felt his heart leap as ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... upon the hard mountain road sounded suddenly above the hiss of the rain-storm. It was quite dark by this time, night having been hurried on by the lowering skies. A moment later, three horsemen, drenched to the skin, drew up in front of the inn, threw their reins over the posts, and dashed for shelter. ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... son, the fate of cooks, From whose mysterious art true pleasure springs, To stall of garters, and to throne of kings. A simple scene, a disobliging song, Which no way to the main design belong, Or were they absent never would be miss'd, Have made a well-wrought comedy be hiss'd; So in a feast, no intermediate fault Will be allow'd; but if not best, 'tis nought. If you, perhaps, would try some dish unknown, Which more peculiarly you'd make your own, Like ancient sailors, still regard the coast,— By venturing ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss

... was swung, and a plank crashed into splinters, leaving a narrow loophole, a foot wide and twelve feet long, through which the roaring flames darted viciously. "When I give the word, all aim at that tree—" he pointed out a round-headed, dwarfed clump of foliage that seemed to hiss with twanging bowstrings—"then fire all together. That's the next best thing to a riot gun I can think of." The crew crouched along the broken plank, every muzzle converged on to a patch of leafy concealment a fathom square, and ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... England at this time permitted no long indulgence of domestic sorrow. "Griefs of an hour's age did hiss the speaker," and pity and sympathy often claimed the falling tear, which had been wrung forth by "own distress." Ribblesdale was again disturbed by the march of hostile troops. The young King had yielded to the solicitations of his Scottish subjects, and transported himself to that country. Less ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... de yudder night Right een de road een white moon-light; Him toss him arms, him whirl him 'roun', Him stomp him foot urpon de groun'; De snaiks come crawlin', one by one, Me hyuh um hiss, me break an' run— De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man, O chillen, run, ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... on board, seeming to have the ambition of ten men, and doing the work of five. I think his zeal bubbled over when he saw Carlos and me. A rope's end was swinging loose from some part of the tackle. Kearny leaped impetuously and caught it. There was a crackle and a hiss and a smoke of scorching hemp, and the Gatling dropped straight as a plummet through the bottom of the flatboat and buried itself in twenty feet of water and five feet of ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... Abolitionist! I glory in the name: Though now by Slavery's minions hiss'd And covered o'er with shame, It is a spell of light and power— The watchword of the free:— Who spurns it in the trial-hour, A craven soul ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various

... their centre were often like hollow trees, and might easily have received the three travellers in one embrace. But as before, the mounds were alive with serpents that evidently made them their homes, and raised an angry hiss whenever the men approached. "The wonder to me," said Bearwarden, "is, that these snakes do not protect the game, by keeping it from the life-devouring plants. It may be that they do not show themselves by day or when the victims are near, or that the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... please; To please by scenes, unconscious of offence, By harmless merriment, or useful sense. Where aught of bright or fair the piece displays, Approve it only;—'tis too late to praise. If want of skill or want of care appear, Forbear to hiss;—the poet cannot hear. By all, like him, must praise and blame be found, At last, a fleeting gleam, or empty sound; Yet then shall calm reflection bless the night, When liberal pity dignified delight; When pleasure ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... enchantress never to come back. The whole people of Athens, too, who had run out of doors to see this wonderful spectacle, set up a shout of joy at the prospect of getting rid of her. Medea, almost bursting with rage, uttered precisely such a hiss as one of her own snakes, only ten times more venomous and spiteful; and glaring fiercely out of the blaze of the chariot, she shook her hands over the multitude below, as if she were scattering a million of curses among them. In ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne



Words linked to "Hiss" :   hissing, speak, outcry, hushing, raspberry, let loose, sibilation, hoot, sibilate, whoosh, locomote, move, travel, condemn, utter, hisser, snort, mouth, boo, emit, talk, verbalise



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