Word.ws English Dictionary

sibilance

sibilance noun: the quality of being sibilant: a hissing quality.

Noun

sibilance (countable and uncountable, plural sibilances)

  1. The quality of being sibilant: a hissing quality.
    • The Pet Shop Boys are yet another synth-pop duo, albeit one that is not quite out of the closet. […] In past interviews, however, they [the Pet Shop Boys] have referred to their sound as "specifically gay disco," and their lyrics have that certain queenly something that lead singer Neil Tennant...1990 December 23, Christopher Wittke, “Pop Goes 1990”, in Gay Community News, volume 18, number 23, page 9
    • The following exercises help combat sibilance, plosives, lazy tongue, and mouth problems.2000, Elaine A. Clark, There's Money Where Your Mouth Is: An Insider's Guide to a Career in Voice-Overs, Second Edition, Back Stage Books, →ISBN, page 24

Examples of sibilance in a sentence

  • A string of words beginning with ‘s’ will cause sibilance.2006, Barbara Alysen, Electronic Reporter: Broadcast Journalism in Australia, Second Edition, University of New south Wales Press, →ISBN...
  • Work to control the sibilance of your s sounds.2009, Jean Ann Wright, M. J. Lallo, Voice-Over for Animation, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 28:
  • Most often sending the vocal through a de-esser will either eliminate the sibilance or greatly reduce its sound.2012, Michael Zager, Music Production: For Producers, Composers, Arrangers, and Students, Second Edition, Scarecrow Press, →ISBN, page 277:

Forms of sibilance

pluralsibilances

Origin of sibilance

From sibilant + -ance.

Questions about sibilance

What does sibilance mean?
Sibilance means the quality of being sibilant: a hissing quality.
How do you use sibilance in a sentence?
A string of words beginning with ‘s’ will cause sibilance.
What part of speech is sibilance?
Sibilance is a noun.
What is the plural of sibilance?
The plural of sibilance is sibilances.

Words near sibilance in the dictionary

  1. Sibes
  2. Sibi
  3. Sibi Division
  4. sibia
  5. sibias
  6. sibilance
  7. sibilances
  8. sibilancies
  9. sibilancy
  10. sibilant
  11. sibilant rhonchi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sibilance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “sibilance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sibilance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.