Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Hissing; sibilant.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective rare Having a hissing sound; hissing; sibilant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Having a hissing sound; sibilant.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin sibilus.

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Examples

  • The words dropped from her lips in a sibilous crescendo as her blood drove her to a display of emotion.

    A Virginia Scout Hugh Pendexter 1907

  • These two birds are so characteristic of the meadows in southwestern counties that a summer evening seems silent to me without the "crake, crake!" of the one and the singular sibilous rattle of the other.

    Nature Near London Richard Jefferies 1867

  • A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the _alauda trivialis_, or rather perhaps of the _motacilla trochilus_) still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods.

    The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 Gilbert White 1756

  • The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields last Saturday.

    The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 Gilbert White 1756

  • This last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise, now and then, at short intervals, shivering a little with its wings when it sings; and is, I make no doubt now, the _regulus non cristatus_ of Ray, which he says "_cantat voce stridula locustae_."

    The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 Gilbert White 1756

  • _Alauda minima Middle April: a small locustae voce_ sibilous note, till the end of July.

    The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 Gilbert White 1756

  • Nature had rather need of annular tubes, such as those of the bronchi in order that they might always remain open, and not be liable to collapse; and that they might continue entirely free from blood, lest the liquid should interfere with the passage of the air, as it so obviously does when the lungs labour from being either greatly oppressed or loaded in a less degree with phlegm, as they are when the breathing is performed with a sibilous or rattling noise.

    On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals 2005

  • Nature had rather need of annular tubes, such as those of the bronchi in order that they might always remain open, and not be liable to collapse; and that they might continue entirely free from blood, lest the liquid should interfere with the passage of the air, as it so obviously does when the lungs labour from being either greatly oppressed or loaded in a less degree with phlegm, as they are when the breathing is performed with a sibilous or rattling noise.

    The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) Various

  • Nature had rather need of annular tubes, such as those of the bronchi in order that they might always remain open, and not be liable to collapse; and that they might continue entirely free from blood, lest the liquid should interfere with the passage of the air, as it so obviously does when the lungs labour from being either greatly oppressed or loaded in a less degree with phlegm, as they are when the breathing is performed with a sibilous or rattling noise.

    Introduction 1909

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