sibilant
UK/ˈsɪb.ɪ.lənt/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
New Zealand/ˈsəb.ə.lənt/
sibilant adjective: characterized by a hissing or hushing sound such as the s or sh in sack or shack.
Adjective
sibilant (comparative more sibilant, superlative most sibilant)
- Characterized by a hissing or hushing sound such as the s or sh in sack or shack.
- She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me, her head would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again; and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity...1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC
- She had a curious habit of prefacing everything she said with a soft sibilant sound.
"S-s-s Grace," she said, "it's just like I was telling Brother Hutson the other day. 'S-s-s Brother Hutson,' I said, 'looks like we're fighting a losing battle, a losing battle.' I said."1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC
- Synonyms:
- hissing, hissy, sibilatory, sibilous
Noun
sibilant (plural sibilants)
- A consonant having a hissing or hushing sound such as the s or sh in sack or shack.
- Groove fricatives all have more or less of an [s]-like quality, and are for this reason sometimes called sibilants.1955, H. A. Gleason, An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics, page 194, section 14.7
- Synonyms:
- groove fricative
sibilant meaning in Urdu and Arabic
sibilant in Urdu
- سفیری, سسکاری
sibilant in Arabic
- characterized by a hissing sound
- صَفِيرِيّ ṣafīriyy
- phonetics: a hissing sound
- حَرْفُ صَفِير ḥarfu ṣafīr
Synonyms of sibilant
Forms of sibilant
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more sibilant |
| superlative | most sibilant |
| Noun | |
| plural | sibilants |
Origin of sibilant
From Latin sībilāns, present active participle of sībilō (“to hiss”).
Words formed from sibilant
Phrases with sibilant
Questions about sibilant
- What does sibilant mean?
- Sibilant means characterized by a hissing or hushing sound such as the s or sh in sack or shack.
- What is sibilant in Urdu?
- Sibilant in Urdu is سفیری, سسکاری. See Sibilant meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is sibilant?
- Sibilant can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce sibilant?
- Sibilant is pronounced /ˈsɪb.ɪ.lənt/ (UK).
Words near sibilant in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sibilant (page history and authors); sibilant (Urdu Wiktionary) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-sibilant.ogg, en-au-sibilant.ogg.
Cite this entry: “sibilant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sibilant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.