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Definitions

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. The act, process, or function of stridulating; the power of so doing, or the thin, harsh, creaking noise thus produced; a shrilling. Stridulation is effected by rubbing together hard or rough parts of the body, often specially modified in various ways or that purpose, being thus not vocalization or phonation. It is highly characteristic of many homopterous insects, as the cicadas; of many orthopterous insects, as various locusts or grasshoppers; and of some coleopterous insects, or beetles. It rarely occurs in lepidopterous insects, but has been observed in some butterflies and moths, and also in a few spiders, as of the genus Theridion. Those homopterous insects in which it is specially marked are named Stridulantia.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A high-pitched chirping, grating, hissing, or squeaking sound, as male crickets and grasshoppers make by rubbing certain body parts together.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. The act of making shrill sounds or musical notes by rubbing together certain hard parts, as is done by the males of many insects, especially by Orthoptera, such as crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts.
  2. n. The noise itself.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a shrill grating or chirping noise made by some insects by rubbing body parts together

Examples

  • “Mary Ball (1812-1892) discovered the underwater stridulation of the Notonectidæ”

    The Prime Minister's haiku

  • “After all, where else would I be able to brag about the happiness I found in finally hearing what the defensive stridulation of a dung beetle sounds like?”

    February 2005

  • “Another nice little adaptive feature of H. nigriceps is that some of the quills have become modified into an organ of stridulation.”

    Simon & Schuster: The Song of The Dodo

  • “That he was not the only one to respond with an involuntary stridulation of shock was shown by the number of abrasive chirrups that echoed in close succession through the various individual workstations.”

    Diuturnity's Dawn

  • “The woods were very quiet, except for a soft scratching sound in the distance that might have been the stridulation of some insect—but Kirk immediately put that thought away; on a new planet, there was no predicting anything at all without data, and your suppositions could kill you without warning.”

    Simon & Schuster: Doctor’s Orders

  • “Sympathetic stridulation by those of like mind momentarily filled the room with the din of a hundred improperly tuned violas.”

    Dirge

  • “Whistles of derision and rising stridulation threatened to drown him out, but this time the specialist would not be denied.”

    Dirge

  • “His feet scraped the uneven floor, and his voice, beginning with a melodic stridulation, became the voice of a child:”

    The Shadow of the Torturer

  • “The 'stridulation,' as this form of musical production is called, in some locusts is so loud that it can be heard on a still night for a distance of a mile.”

    Chatterbox, 1905.

  • “Throughout great lengths of shore-line the tuneless stridulation of frogs, the guttural cries of water-birds and the general movement in the sedge indicated a serene content among small life.”

    The Yoke A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt

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Comments

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  • rolig Just to provide some context: The people who are laughing have been living for decades in a department store and only emerge when the store is closed; in order not to be heard by the night watchman, they only speak in whispers, so this is how they laugh. "Evening Primrose" is a brilliant short story, and the simile, I think is wonderfully precise. Jan 28, 2008
  • uselessness Sounds like something from the Bulwer-Lytton contest! Jan 23, 2008
  • yarb I'm trying and failing to parse that ridiculous simile. Obviously Collier spends more time in grasshopper Hades than I. Jan 23, 2008
  • reesetee Maybe they're related to uselessness. ;-> Jan 23, 2008
  • sionnach Methinks Mr. Collier is trying just a leetle bit too hard here. "stridulating grasshopper ghosts ?"

    Donnez-moi un break. Jan 23, 2008
  • rolig "Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers."
    – John Collier, "Evening Primrose", Fancies and Goodnights Jan 23, 2008

‘stridulation’ has been looked up 793 times, loved by 1 person, added to 13 lists, commented on 6 times, and has a Scrabble score of 13.