"Sibilant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 came. It ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Here a shrill chirp; there a click, like the click made with the tongue; further on, plaintive murmurs; in the distance a tinkle like that of the bell on the neck of the wandering ox. Suddenly Rey heard a strange sound, a rapid note, that could be produced only by the human tongue and lips. This sibilant breathing passed through the young man's brain like a flash of lightning. He felt that swift "s-s-s" dart snake-like through him, repeated again and then again, with augmented intensity. He looked all around, then he looked toward the upper part of the ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... nineteenth letter of the alphabet, which is called a sibilant, because it makes a hissing sound like a ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... with watchful eyes, Piercing, shameless, and indiscreet, With ears wide open for soft replies And sounds that are sibilant and sweet! With light approach (not a lynx so still), With figure meanly invisible, With threatening voice and iron will, And shrill demands or he'll "go ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... the sibilant tones. "Now, in the matter of the loan to an English newspaper, you have ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... 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 ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... whispers now, and with a finger at his lips the cook gave us a warning glance. He then laid hold of the rope that was made fast to a shears overhead, swung out, and slid down to the very keelson. Silently, one at a time, we followed. The only sound was our sibilant breathing and the very faint shuffle of feet. Now we could see, almost midway between the hatches, the dim light of a candle and a man at work. While we watched, the man cautiously struck several blows. Was he scuttling the ship? Then, as Roger and the cook tiptoed forward, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... 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 most ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... is to be understood as French or English z, not in its German use. Strictly speaking, this "z" (intervocalic -s-) was not voiced but was a soft voiceless sound, a sibilant intermediate between our s and z. In modern North German it has become voiced to z. It is important not to confound this s—z with the voiceless intervocalic s that soon arose from the older lisped ss. In Modern German ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... was sufficiently 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 audience ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... of the commotion that followed and while Mrs. Saumarez, attended by the doctors, was being carried out of the Court-room, Tansley, at Brent's elbow, drew in his breath with a sharp sibilant sound that came near being a whistle. Brent turned from the withdrawing figures to look at ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... memories when he wrote, describing the dawn of a spring 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, ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... was aware of a light step, a swishing, sibilant, delightful rustling—the caress of sound is the rustling of a well-groomed woman's skirts—and of an afterthought of violets, of a mere reminiscence of orris, all of which came toward him through the dimness of the hall. He ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools, suddenly bubbling up ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... too, afforded him hardly less pleasure, as he always had to let go at the fourth ring, if not the third, whence he plunged into the water with a sound that, curiously enough, was more resonant than sibilant. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... by, and Tony lay like a veritable Samson shorn of his strength, for his voice was sunken to a hoarse, sibilant whisper, and his black eyes gazed fiercely from the shock of hair and beard about a white face. Life went on pretty much as before in the shop; the children paused to ask how Mr. Tony was, and even hushed the jingles on their bell hoops as they ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... 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 ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... woodsy cry from the dense shadows of a fern-brake far in the woods on the right, and they heard the muffled trickling of water, falling on mossy stones hard by, from a spring so slight as to be only a silver thread. The trees far below waved in the wind, and a faint dryadic sibilant singing sounded a measure or so, and grew fainter in the lulling of the breeze, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... he assumed a crouching posture, the Sank centered his burning gaze on the face of Deerfoot, drew back his lips until his white teeth showed like those of a wild cat, and uttered a tremulous, sibilant sound, as if he were a serpent ready to ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... yard nearer, and then he uttered that low noise, sibilant and warning, which the woman, the product of the border, knew to be made by a human being. She raised herself a little, although it was difficult with her bound hands to sit upright, and saw a dark shadow approaching her. That dark shadow she knew to be the ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... faculty of going to sleep anywhere and any time opportunity offered. She now leaned comfortably against the wall beside the sink, her eyes closed and her mind oblivious to her surroundings, and dimly hearing through her dreams that sibilant call: ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... sound 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, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... would be worth more to this here world than gold. Water makes things grow and—and keeps a fella from gettin' thirsty. And mud makes things grow, too, but I dunno what rocks are for. Just to sit on when you're tired, I reckon." The sibilant burring of a rattler in the brush set his neck and back tingling. "And what snakes was made for, gets me! They ain't good to eat, nohow. And they ain't friendly like some of the bugs and things. I'm thinkin' that that there snake what ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... said she, in a sibilant voice, "to talk to me as you are doing, when you have just told me that you love another woman, and are going to ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... was correct, and the speaker was Girasole. He had heard the sibilant sounds of the whispering, and, knowing that Minnie could not speak Italian, it had struck him as being a very singular thing that she should be whispering. Had her sister joined her? He thought he would go up and see. So he went up softly, and the whispering still went on. He therefore ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... say, Elmer, and I reckon you're quite right, too," always in a low, sibilant tone that would not carry further than a dozen yards at ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... in sudden violence, so hard that he flung his glove to the floor. As he stooped to snatch it up he uttered a sibilant hiss. Then, stalking to the door, he jerked it open, and slammed it behind him. His loud voice, hoarse with passion, preceded the scrape ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... should be expelled without mercy. A single eucalyptus will ruin the fairest landscape. No plant on earth rustles in such a horribly metallic fashion when the wind blows through those everlastingly withered branches; the noise chills one to the marrow; it is like the sibilant chattering of ghosts. Its oil is called "medicinal" only because it happens to smell rather nasty; it is worthless as timber, objectionable in form and hue—objectionable, above all things, in its perverse, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... politely 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 ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... 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 his ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Bohemia—literary, theatrical, and artistic. One day, in 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 ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... his teeth in a wolfish snarl. "She is my wife," he said, in his slow, sibilant way. "I shall not set her free. And—wherever I go, she will ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... thereafter Cleena 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 ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... out of storm had grown the tender calm of a flowing melody, on which wordless dreams of happiness glittered like rainbow bubbles on foam, shining for a moment and then vanishing at a breath; it had caught the voices of the rain and wind,—and the pattering drops and sibilant hurricane had whizzed sharply through the scale of sound till the very notes seemed alive with the wrath of nature,—and then it had rolled all the wild clamour away into a sustained magnificence of prayerful chords which seemed to plead for all things ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... to pieces. White solidarity was riven and shattered. And—fear of white power and respect for white civilization together dropped away like garments outworn. Through the bazaars of Asia ran the sibilant whisper: 'The East will see the West to bed.'" At last comes the inevitable conclusion pleading for a better understanding between England and Germany and for everything else that would make for racial solidarity. The pitiful thing about this book is that ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... De Sylva's sibilant order, most of the Andromeda's crew were hidden by the scrub from which they were about ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the Treasury Cluck, like chicken, Now with small beaks the ravenous Bill opposing;[212:1] With serpent-tongue now stinging, and now licking, 15 Now semi-sibilant, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... it was not a sound, but the mere shadow of one. It was rhythmic, low, beating like a pulse. What could it be? Again I sat up, listening and peering into the darkness. And this time I was not mistaken—there was a sound, rustling, sibilant. ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... moment an 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 ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... half-articulate murmur and awakening. How still the morning is! It is at such times that we discover what music there is in the souls of the little slate- colored snowbirds. How they squeal, and chatter, and chirp, and trill, always in scattered troops of fifty or a hundred, filling the air with a fine sibilant chorus! That joyous and childlike "chew," "chew," "chew" is very expressive. Through this medley of finer songs and calls, there is shot, from time to time, the clear, strong note of the meadowlark. It comes from some field or tree farther ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... woman's voice, soft, sibilant, hushed, and the frozen grip of fear was broken. She ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... with sweet drooping flowers, displaying all their humble stores of lace and ribbons and trinkets, jostling one another with slurring hisses of silk and crisp rattle of muslins, speaking affectedly with pursed lips, ending often a sibilant with a fine whistle, or silent, with mouths set in conscious smiles and cheeks hot with blushes. There were the village young men, in their Sunday clothes, standing aloof from the girls, now and ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... day to day, interesting changes can be 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 been encountered ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... and modifying the sibilant, which is, however, the stronger of the two consonants; e.g. hsing hissing without ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... at his heels, the morio slowly made his way up the stairs. Goaded by the taunts of the outlaws, his face was distorted with ferocity; through his lips came a fierce, sibilant breathing; in the dim light his colossal figure and enormous head seemed in no wise human, but rather a murderous phantasm. With head rolling from side to side, stabbing in the air with his knife, he continued to approach,—an object ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... as the one-eyed Chinaman resumed his seat and the one-eyed raven sank into slumber, Pyne suddenly spoke in Chinese, a tongue which he understood as it is understood by few Englishmen; that strange, sibilant speech which is alien from all Western conceptions of oral intercourse as the Chinese institutions and ideals are alien from those of the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... in the kitchen resembled the resonant humming of bees, and again, when it became animated, it sounded like the distant cackling of geese. Then there would come a pause; and it would begin again with sibilant whispers, and end in a chorus of dry laughter that somehow suggested the crackling of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dragged off his sodden buckskin breeches. The room wavered and blurred in his weary vision—squat, rush-bottomed Dutch chairs seemed to revolve about a table with apparently a hundred legs, a bearskin floated across the floor.... He secured the banian; and, swathing himself in its cool, sibilant folds, he fell, his face hid in an angle of his arm, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... am," he said, his voice low, sibilant, menacing. "I have laid my plans, and shall pursue them with a complete detachment. Others may suffer—so shall I. I have practically reached the limit of my resources. In a month or less I shall be penniless. What money ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... 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
... began to observe an alteration in the language spoken; it had become less sibilant, and more guttural; and, when addressing each other, the speakers used the Spanish title of courtesy usted, or your worthiness, instead of the Portuguese high flowing vossem se, or your lordship. This ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... behind the blossoming curtain, alive with the minute, multitudinous, swift-moving, glittering forms, some nobler form will be hidden in a hole or fissure in the wall. Here on many a night I have listened to the sibilant screech of the white owl and the brown owl's ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... brought them there walked up to Arcot and spoke to him in a softly musical language, a language that was sibilant and predominated in liquid sounds; there were no gutturals, no nasals; it was a more musical language than Earth men had ever before heard, and now Arcot started in surprise, for he understood it perfectly; the language ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... worshippers through the blue fog of incense! KO-NGAI!—What a thunder tone was that! All the lacquered goblins on the palace cornices wriggle their fire-colored tongues! And after each huge shock, how wondrous the multiple echo and the great golden moan and, at last, the sudden sibilant sobbing in the ears when the immense tone faints away in broken whispers of silver,—as though a woman should whisper, "Hiai!" Even so the great bell hath sounded every day for well-nigh five hundred years,—Ko-Ngai: first with stupendous ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... was never accused of not being noisy enough, while we have one bird who, though he is classed with the oscines, passes his life in almost unbroken silence. Of course I refer to the waxwing, or cedar-bird, whose faint, sibilant whisper can scarcely be thought to contradict the foregoing description. By what strange freak he has lapsed into this ghostly habit, nobody knows. I make no account of the insinuation that he gave up music because it hindered ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... hang on our motions! But, as I said, all this time we were at work; our emissaries gave us enough to do: we knew what spoil the robbers in the March had made, the decree issued in Vienna, the order of the day in Paris, the last word exchanged between the Cardinals, what whispers were sibilant in the Vatican; we mined deeper every day, and longed for the electric stroke which should kindle the spark and send princes and principalities shivered widely into atoms. But, friend, this was not to be. We knew one thing more, too: we knew at last that we also were watched,—when men sang ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... wondered and pushed his boat slowly in on the gravel, a low pr-r-r and a sibilant ripple of water caused him to look behind. A high-bowed, shining mahogany cruiser, seventy feet or more over all, rounded the point and headed into the bay. The smooth sea parted with a whistling sound where her brass-shod stem split ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... world he has dreamed of, peopled by saints and martyrs, where the flowers are quickly woven into crowns and the light streams from the gates of Paradise, and every breeze whispers the sweet sibilant name of Jesus, and there, on the bare but beautiful roads, Christ meets His disciples, or at the convent gate welcomes a traveller, and if He be not there He has but just passed by, and if He has not just ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... remained rooted to the spot, his ears strained to catch a repetition of the fancied sound. It had been only a faint murmur; he might have been mistaken ... yes, there it was again, a sort of choked, sibilant whisper coming from the adjoining room. Hardly had he made sure of it when there fell on his ears a small crash, sharp, as of some object dropped on the parquet. It was followed by a smothered exclamation in a ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... of Flowers at Nice. March, she is at Monaco, at Monte Carlo—ah! April, Miss W. has arrived in Paris. May and June, she is in London. July, she is attending English race meetings with young Clanclaren—" the Prince paused with a sibilant expulsion of breath. "I must not ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Mrs. Lewis, as she at once said, in a honey-sweet voice, and with what seemed to me a foreign accent; but then I had never heard the Southern accent, which is full of music, and seems somehow to avoid the sibilant tone as well as the nasal drawl ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... spinning wheels and hunched drivers. The movement was like a scurry of ants. Rick watched, taking in everything. He didn't even notice when the massive door was swung shut, closing against its airtight cushion with a sibilant hiss. ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... 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 ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... was marked by a curious sibilant sound, which, on acquaintance, proved to be a whistled tune. During the interview which followed, except when he was speaking, the ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was 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
... There is 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 ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... cried the merchant, half indignantly, "I call them splendid, glorious, inimitable! Only look you here, it is all virgin silver; and observe, I beseech you, this dragon's neck and the sibilant head that holds the rowels; they are wrought to the very life with horrent scales, and erected crest; beautiful! beautiful!—and the rowels too of the best Spanish steel that was ever tempered in the cold Bilbilis. Good spurs indeed! they are well worth three ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... tremendous velocity, carrying with it minute particles of water. Nor was the sea running mountains high, for the hurricane kept it down. Indeed during those fierce hours no sea was visible, for the whole surface was caught up and carried furiously into the air, like snow-drift on the prairies, sibilant, relentless. There was profound quiet on deck, the little life which existed being concentrated near the bow, where the captain was either lashed to the foremast, or in shelter in the pilot-house. Never a soul appeared on deck, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... were in, yet not for its mistress's sake, who was at least faithful to her instincts, candid to the candid, made no favourites, and, eventually, compelled order. He told me also that if friends he had, he deemed it wiser not to name them, since the least sibilant of the sound of the voice incites to treachery; and in conclusion, that of all men he was acquainted with, one at least never failed to right his humour; and that one was yonder flabby, pallid fellow with the velvet collar ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... 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 ideas, when spoken ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... of my announcement came in a quick exclamation from Wright, a sibilant intake of breath, that did not seem to denote surprise so much as certainty. Wright might have emitted a ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... only smile," they used to exclaim in sibilant whispers, as they passed on the way to the laundry. "If he'd come in an' joke while we ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... 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
... 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 over ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... showed on the wrist; and a certain puffiness was becoming observable in the injured hand and arm. Smith bent down and drew a quick, sibilant breath. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the light a low, sibilant whisper reached him. At the cross-corridor doorway he was in time to see the flicker of a vanishing gray garment and a sandaled foot on a naked ankle flash over the vestibule wave-check. He shook open ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... though Jolly Roger could understand no word that was spoken he knew Porter was whispering the exciting secret of his identity to Josephine Tavish. He could see, for a moment, a shadow of protest in her face, he could hear the quick, sibilant whisper of her voice, and Porter cautioned her with a finger at her lips, and made a gesture toward the sleeping Tavish. Then his fingers closed about her uncoiled hair as he drew her to him. McKay watched the long kiss between them. The girl drew away quickly then, and Porter tucked ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... as Garland's punt slipped away from the island. It was intensely still, a whisper of water round the moving prow, the sibilant dip of the paddle the only sounds. He could see the water as a pale, winding shimmer ahead, dotted with star reflections like small, scattered flowers. Once, rising to make sure of his course, he saw the tiny yellow light ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the knocker put by with Mr. Bowls's plate. She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day; and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours. When anybody entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, that it frightened the poor old lady in her bed, from which she could not look without seeing Mrs. Bute's beady eyes eagerly fixed on her, as the latter sate steadfast in the arm-chair by the bedside. They seemed to lighten in the dark (for she kept the curtains closed) as she ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cold, clear, winter evening, the east wind piping its sharp sibilant ditty in the bare shorn hedges, and poking its sharp fingers into the sides of well broad-clothed men by the way of passing jest, Mr. Spires, a great manufacturer of Stockington, driving in his gig some seven miles from the town, passed a poor woman with a stout child on her back. The large ruddy-looking ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... French Mission I had exchanged farewells, and before me beamed the sun of promise as he sped towards the Occident. Loveliness glowed around me. I saw fertile fields, riant vegetation, strange trees—I heard the cry of cricket and pee-wit, and sibilant sound of many insects, all of which seemed to tell me, "At last you are started." What could I do but lift my face toward the pure-glowing sky, and cry, "God ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... had tied the little grey horse to a tree he unroped his luggage and carried the most of it back to the point where the others had left the road. He called out cautiously and received a sibilant answer. He and the dragoman bunted among the trees until they came to where a forlorn company was seated awaiting them lifting their faces like frogs out of a pond. His first question did not give them ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... been sleeping,' he said, in the craftily-qualified tone of the experienced one who thoroughly understands the difference in a time of danger between the carefully subdued tone and the penetrating, sibilant ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... self-denial, 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
... our conversations were not particularly fluent. Frequently there gathered around us a crowd of gaping peasants, and when the word "Americaine" came out, there were "Oh's" and "Ah" of astonishment, or as often, when our explanations were not believed, sibilant hisses that shaped themselves into the menacing word "Spion." We had been led to believe that sooner or later a wool-witted sentry would shoot first and investigate later; but so far they had simply crossed bayonets, or with their hands ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... fiord or in the pine forests, Elizabeth's bright, speaking face seemed to move before him like a will o' the wisp; even in the rustle of the summer breeze in the leaves he could hear her voice, with its odd breaks and sibilant pauses, so curiously sweet to his ear. "I am possessed," he would say to himself—"I am possessed!" and indeed with all his strength of will he was powerless to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Shuffle (cards) miksi, enmiksi—igi. Shuffle (prevaricate) cxikani. Shun eviti. Shut fermi. Shutter, window fenestra kovrilo. Shuttle naveto. Shy timeta, hontema. Shyness timeteco, honteco. Si (music) B. Si (flat) Bes. Sibilant sibla, sibla sono. Sick (ill) malsana. Sick vomema. Sicken malsanigxi. Sickle rikoltilo. Sickly malsanema. Side flanko. Sideboard telermeblo. Side face profilo. Siege siegxo. Sieve kribrilo. Sift kribri. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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
... 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
... attracted by another warble in the same locality, and experience a like difficulty in getting a good view of the author of it. It is quite a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds well amid the old trees. In the upland woods of beech and maple it is a more familiar sound than in these solitudes. On taking the bird in hand, one cannot help exclaiming, "How beautiful!" So tiny and ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... the clear-eyed day, night was presently here, with mystery and doubt and dark presage. The voice of Hoho-hebee Falls seemed to him louder, full of strange, uncomprehended meanings, and insistent iteration. Vague echoes were elicited. Sometimes in a seeming pause he could catch their lisping sibilant tones repeating, repeating—what? As the darkness encroached yet more heavily upon the cataract, the sense of its unseen motion so close at hand oppressed his very soul; it gave an idea of the swift gathering ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... between tight-drawn lips so lately smiling; strong swimmers fighting for another moment's breath, and one by one dragged down by many hidden hands: then the sharp hiss of swift-quenched flames, then darkness, and the stifling of sobbing groans into silence, and after that only the sibilant undertone of waters rushing swiftly past ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... cups of coffee. There was a rumble and clatter of German. Every one seemed to know every one else. A game of chess was in progress at one table, and between moves each contestant would refresh himself with a long-drawn, sibilant mouthful of coffee. There was nothing about the place or its occupants to remind one of America. This dim, smoky, cake-scented cafe ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... into a peace indescribable, unlike anything she had ever known before, she heard a woman's voice, hushed to a sibilant whisper, remark, "My, Nap! You're too smart to be ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Presently the sibilant rush of waters forewarns rapids. Indians and voyageurs debark, invert canoes on their shoulders, packs on back with straps across foreheads, and amble away over the portages at that voyageurs' dog-trot which is half walk, half run. So the rapids of Carillon ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... names of various familiar objects, or repeating such as we found in the vocabularies of former voyages, took great pains to teach us, and were much delighted when we could catch the just pronunciation of a word. For my own part, no language seemed easier to acquire than this; every harsh and sibilant consonant being banished from it, and almost every word ending in a vowel. The only requisite, was a nice ear to distinguish the numerous modifications of the vowels which must naturally occur in a language confined ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the world is encircled in the coils of a vast serpent; and the name of the serpent is Gossip. Wherever man is, there may you hear its sibilant whisper, and its foul spawn squirm and sting and poison in nests of hidden noisomeness, myriad as the spores of corruption in a putrefying carcass, varying in size from some hydra-headed infamy endangering whole nations and even races with its deadly breath, to the microscopic wrigglers ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... trail through more ancient ruins, into a cottonwood grove and then on to a sandy flat. Sitting low in my saddle, almost dozing, I revived suddenly at a never-to-be-mistaken B-u-u-z-z-z! The horses recognized it instantly and froze in their tracks. Sibilant, wicked, it sounded again, and then a yellow streak slid across the trail and disappeared under a low bush. We waited, and pretty soon a coffin-shaped head came up and waved slowly to and fro. The Chief shot him with his forty-five and the snake twisted and ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... Klayu. There was something sinister in the gently heaving stillness of the vast body of water, for not ten feet from the flap of the tent tiny ripples of the incoming tide were swallowing at the dry sand with sibilant softness. One end of the pile of provisions just below the tent was already a foot deep ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... believed that there was no possibility of escape from them. We became aware that there was a great variety of them in the swamps and thickets beneath through the noises that they made—heart-quaking cries, squealing sounds, gruntings, and, most trying of all, a loud, piercing whistle whose sibilant pulsations penetrated the ear like thrusts of a needle. I pictured to myself a colossal serpent as the most probable author of this terrifying sound, but the error of my fancy was demonstrated by a tragedy which ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... doors would not open except by the application of brute force, and many of the windows rattled, so that carpenters were in possession of the premises a total of one hundred and twenty-eight hours in the course of nine calendar months, and I was compelled to listen in hang-dog silence to Josephine's sibilant commentary, that this was the natural result of buying a ready-made house. Still, I must admit that on the whole she behaved extraordinarily well under these trying circumstances, and said nothing more tart than that, if she ever were so foolish as to move ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... vestibules, before and after service, it is not decorous to chat sociably along the aisles, or hold a gossiping conference in whispers with some one in the neighboring pew. I have in mind one woman, who ought to have known better, whose sibilant utterances—just five pews distant—came to be a regular part of the five minutes' pause immediately before the service began. Her conversation was usually directed to another woman, who, likewise, should have known better than ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... together to the door of the third house, and their heads were together; and a few sibilant consonants escaped them. The breath of the men that stood out under the starlight went up like smoke in the air. It was now a ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... do—" began the chairman; but he stopped, checked by a wave of sibilant remonstrance ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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 ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... symptoms. It is almost immediately accompanied by a purulent secretion from the bronchi, and the second day does not pass without the characters of pneumonia being completely developed. The respiration is accompanied by a mucous 'rale' which often becomes sibilant. The nasal cavities are filled with a purulent fluid. The dog that coughs violently at the commencement of the disease, employs himself, probably, on the following day, in ejecting, by a forcible expulsion from the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... against the softness of her arm, and at their touch the arm trembled, and from far away came the quick, sibilant gasp ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... be japers!" was the conjecture that dropped from the ship-carpenter's lips, while the same thought occurred simultaneously to the others; for they could think of no living thing, other than a serpent, capable of sending forth such a sibilant sound ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... from a window above; a clear, sibilant sound; a human voice uttering one word, but investing it with a volume of reproach ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... delightfully broken English, in vivid French, or sibilant Tahitian, Lovaina issued her orders to the girls, shouted maledictions at the cook, or talked with all who came. Through that porch flowed all the scandal of the South Seas—tales of hurricanes and waterspouts, of shipwrecks, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... sibilant noise made by the mother's lips crossed the space and the listening lad halted and looked round. She did not speak, but beckoned him to come ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... of the sibilant or hissing sounds of the voice are computed to be represented by depressions less than a millionth of an inch in depth. Yet these are reproduced ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... a violent whisper, so strong and sibilant that every word was audible to the watcher ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quite as well worth caring for as Alencon. "Avant, gentil duc," she cried at another moment, "forward! Are you afraid? you know I promised your wife to bring you safe home." Thus her voice keeps ringing through the din, her white armour gleams. "Sus! Sus!" the bold cry is almost audible, sibilant, whistling amid the whistling of ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the pool that I see in my dreams, dear love, I have sat with you time and again; And listened beneath the dank leaves, dear love, To the sibilant sound of the rain. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... As I ebb'd with the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok, Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems, Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... around the windows, shivering with dread, and afraid to jump out. The snakes were writhing about, crippled and blistered by the heat, darting out their forked tongues, and expressing their rage and fear in the most sibilant of hisses. The 'Happy Family' were experiencing an amount of beatitude which was evidently too cordial for philosophical enjoyment. A long tongue of flame had crept under the cage, completely singing every hair from the cat's body. The felicitous adder was slowly ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... columns of blue smoke drifted up here and there between the close-set tents, and the sibilant wearing of stone-mills, as they ground the wheat, was heard in many households. The nutty aroma of parching lentils, and the savor of roasting papyrus root and garlic told the stage of the morning meal. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... tossing corn at that time of the year when the bride came out, and as her sewing window was on the side of the house which faced the sunset, she passed a good part of each day looking into that great rustling mass, breathing in its succulent odors and listening to its sibilant melody. It was her picture gallery, her opera, her spectacle, and, being sensible,—or perhaps, being merely happy,—she ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... whispered. He drew his automatic swiftly from his pocket, and, pressed against the wall beside the window, looked about him as a man looks who finds himself surrounded by enemies. Not a sound disturbed the stillness of the garden except for sibilant rustlings of the leaves, occasioned by a ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... Yet, no. 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 ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... feet had carried her to the centre of the stage an ominous sound broke the silence of expectation. A hiss came from one of the boxes; it was repeated from another, and another. The sibilant sound spread round the house; it swelled into a sinister storm of hisses and boos. The light faded out of the dancer's eyes, the smile from her lips; and as the tumult of disapprobation rose to a deafening climax the curtain was rung down, and Lola rushed weeping from the stage. Her career ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... 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 ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... 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
... concatenation of quick shots like metallic cries, exploding hail-storm of iron in the air, a desert over which thousands of puffs of smoke shot up and swelled and drifted, the sliding crash far away, the sibilant hiss swift overhead. Boom! Weeeee—eeeeooooo! from the east. Boom! Weeeee—eeeeooooo! from ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... it, by Gad. [A sibilant whispering becomes audible: they are all saying Sh-ch to themselves]. Szczepanowska! Not an English ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... noble view of hill and plain. The inner slope of the green fosse is inclined at an angle pleasant to recline on, with the head just below the edge, in the summer sunshine. A faint sound as of a sea heard in a dream—a sibilant 'sish, sish'—passes along outside, dying away and coming again as a fresh wave of the wind rushes through the bennets and the dry ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... the rules in such matters. More than once I arrived at the opera a few minutes late, once four minutes late, the doors are closed and guarded, and I listen to the overture from the outside. At a concert led by the famous von Buelow half a dozen women come in after the music has begun, rustling, sibilant, and excited. The music stops, the great conductor turns to glare at them, and, referring to the geese which are said to have saved Rome by their hissing, thunders: "Hier ist kein Capitol ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... 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 ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... At the far end of the room, he saw one of the well-known portraits of Philip IV projected by a lantern upon a huge sheet of canvas. The widening shaft of light that traversed the intervening space dimly disclosed the audience as a series of heads, from which arose a sibilant wave of amused comment as the portrait of the king melted into that of his daughter, a serious infant with corkscrew curls, all unconscious of the monstrous absurdity of her voluminous skirts. This transition from ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... short, sibilant breath, looking at me with rapidly dilating eyes: they ran me all over, as if he ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... was a long silence... silence broken only by that softly sibilant detonation which belongs most properly to the month of June, but confines itself to no season... to a long, long silence born of and blessed by the gods... until one Percival Sheridan, coming stealthily home from a late debauch at Humphrey's drug store, and ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... supplants the Zal; e.g. Dahaba (for zahaba) he went (v. 277 and passim); also T takes the place of Th, as Tult for thulth one third (iii. 348) and Tamrat (for thamrat) fruit (v. 260), thus generally ignoring the sibilant Th after the fashion of the modern Egyptians who say Tumm (for thumma) again; "Kattir (for kaththir) Khayrak" God increase thy weal, and Lattama (for laththama) he veiled. Also a general ignoring of the dual, e.g. Haza 'usfurayn (for 'Usfurani) these be birds ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... The whisper grew sibilant—serpentine. Dr. Cairn felt the hilt of a dagger thrust into his right hand, and in the dimly-mysterious light looked down at one who lay in a bed ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... either sibilant as in thigh; or semivocal as in thee; both of which are simple sounds, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... tightening his obnoxious coils about her all the time. Even now she could feel his hand upon her arm, could hear his sibilant whisper, could see his intense eyes full of suggestion and threat. Now she found herself face to face with the crisis of all these years. Her only hope lay in the thought that neither could afford the scandal of an open declaration. Bansemer ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... a sibilant duet from Grace and Jock. "Not now. She's sleeping. We were up with her for three hours last night. It was the new food. She's ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... painful cough is present, but it is paroxysmal and incomplete. Auscultation and percussion greatly aid us in a diagnosis. A normal sound is given on percussion. On auscultation, in the early stages, rhonchus rales are detected if the larger tubes are affected, and sibilant rales if the smaller ones are affected. Later mucous rales are noted, and sometimes all sounds in certain parts are absent, owing to the plugging up of the tubes. This plugging, if extensive enough, is sometimes the cause ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... was so easy, and there was so little chance of being hit back. Besides, it gave you an agreeable feeling of importance, after having been so long ignored or patronized yourself. That's why, Mr. Wentz," the words sounded sibilant through her shut teeth, "you're going to honor my ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... notes which are the same in every individual and their very own. One of them is a clear, soft, musical whistle, slightly inflected; another a kissing sound, usually repeated two or three times or oftener, a somewhat percussive smack; still another, a sharp, prolonged hissing or sibilant but at the same time metallic note, compared by some one to the sound produced by milking a cow into a tin pail—a very good description. There are other lesser notes: a musical, thrush-like chirp, repeated slowly, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... belief. Turrald of Missenden! It was a great old name. Mr. Brimsdown rolled it round his tongue as though it were a vintage port—pronounced it lingeringly, rolling the "rr's" sonorously, and hissing the "ss's" with a caressing sibilant sound. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... 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 his voice suddenly ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... one consolation 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 ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... boulders, carved to grotesque and ghostly shapes by a million years' wind and water, reared themselves aloft and threw shadows in the moonlight. The wind, caught in the gulch, rose and fell in unearthly, sibilant sounds. If ever fiends from below walk the earth, this time and place was a fitting one for them. Jack curved a hand around his mouth, and emitted a strange, mournful, low cry, which might have been the scream of a ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... into the bushes, and were received by a veritable rain of stones and spears. Not an enemy was in sight. On all sides they heard the snapping sound of the slings, the whistling of the stones, the sibilant hiss of the spears that at every step fell in increasing numbers, but they could not see whence they came, and no whisper or rustle of underbrush revealed ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... apologies for the poor service and humble surroundings. "It is the doings of miss," she whispered, in her native sibilant Mexican, when Nola found an excuse to leave Frances alone at ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... the third time after that narrow scrape at the gates the man roused up to peer back through the rear window of the limousine, Sofia heard a harshly sibilant intake of breath between shut teeth, and surmised the discovery that the car which had so narrowly missed blocking their escape had picked up the trail, and was ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... that evening. Cora thought the Shoreham rooms beautiful, though she took care not to let the room-clerk know she thought so. Ray, always a silent, inarticulate man, was so wordless that Cora took him to task for it in a sibilant aside. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... Vergniaud determinedly, "Is always a covert thing. We betray each other in the dark, with silent foot-steps and sibilant voices. We whisper our lies. We concoct our intrigues with carefully closed doors. I did so. I was a priest of the Roman Church as I am now; it would never have done for a priest to be a social sinner! I therefore took every precaution to hide my fault;—but out of my lie springs a living condemnation; ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... sound of j in jest is spelt with the single sign j, whilst the compound sibilant sound in chest is spelt with the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... 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 ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... This sibilant monologue was so nicely attuned by Trix that Miss Georgiana (nor many of the girls besides Agnes herself) did not hear it. But it got on Agnes' nerves and one afternoon, before the first week of school was ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... 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 flared ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... 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
... enemy," 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
... 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 Diorama," called for "Miss Barrett, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... some 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
... days and nights Tatsu remained to himself. The anxious listeners heard at times the sound of restless pacing up and down,—the thin, sibilant noise of stockinged feet sliding on padded straw. Again there would be a thud, as of a body fallen, or sunken heavily to the floor. Kano, on the second day, pale with apprehension, went early to the hospital for a revocation, or at ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... veranda now, looking out into the blue twilight. The rain drummed noisily on the roof and the soft swish of its descent into the grass rose to a clear, sibilant note. The wind had died down completely, and the raindrops fell in long, straight lines like an opaque, glistening wall, which shut them off from the rest of the world. Back of them, the fire lighted up the empty chair that Lydia had ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... him with drooping eyelids and a slight smile so full of acid possibilities that De la Riviere drew in a sibilant breath of delight. Her movement had been as towards an impertinence; but as she caught Valmond's eye, something in it, so really boylike, earnest, and free from insolence, met hers, that, with a little way she had, she laid back her head slowly, her lips parted in a sweet, ambiguous smile, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
