hiss
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English hissen, probably of onomatopoeic origin (compare Arabic هَسْهَسَ (hashasa)). Compare Middle Dutch hissen, hisschen (“to chase away, shoo”), Middle Low German hissen (“to chase, hound, incite”).
Inflected forms:
form: hisses
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: hisses
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: hissing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: hissed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: hissed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A sibilant sound, such as that made by a snake or escaping steam; an unvoiced fricative.
pos: noun
examples: Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss,
And boding screech-owls make the concert full!
[…] over head the dismal hiss
Of fiery Darts in flaming volies flew,
A hundred Reeds, of a prodigious Growth,
Scarce made a Pipe, proportion’d to his Mouth:
Which, when he gave it Wind, the Rocks around,
And watry Plains, the dreadful Hiss resound.
[…] his form was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed in with the low hiss of the leafy trees.
Her voice was a hiss, like gas escaping from a bottle of soda.
gloss: An expression of disapproval made using such a sound.
pos: noun
examples: […] in open disputations ye haue bene openly conuict, ye haue bene openly driuen out of the schole with hisses […]
1716, Joseph Addison, The Free-Holder, 16 April, 1716, London: D. Midwinter and J. Tonson, pp. 203-204,
The Actors, in the midst of an innocent old Play, are often startled with unexpected Claps or Hisses; and do not know whether they have been talking like good Subjects, or have spoken Treason.
Once or twice she was encored five and six times in succession, and received with hisses when she appeared, and discharged with hisses and laughter when she had finished—then instantly encored and insulted again!
Like a moustachioed pantomime villain relishing boos and hisses from the audience, Trump is oblivious to warnings and protestations from the sane world and simply contemptuous of the lickspittle mob desperately hoping to go unnoticed.
gloss: To make a hiss, a sibilant sound of air escaping.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: As I started to poke it, the snake hissed at me.
The poor cat hissed as it backed away from the approaching man.
And in his wound the seared blood did make a gréeuous sound,
 As when a peece of stéele red who tane vp with tongs is drownd
 In water by the smith, it spirts and hisseth in the trowgh.
The man came back, and said something in a lower voice, to which the other replied, “she sleeps,” or Ellena was deceived by the hissing consonants of some other words.
The frying pan hissed and sizzled as Ishvar gently slid ping-pong sized balls into the glistening oil.
gloss: To call someone by hissing.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: I stepped out of my tent in Marrakech one night to get a bar of candy and caught your dose of clap when that Wac I never even saw before hissed me into the bushes.
gloss: To condemn or express contempt (for someone or something) by hissing.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
transitive
examples: The crowd booed and hissed her off the stage.
If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the players in the theatre, I am no true man.
The merchants among the people shall hiss at thee […]
VVherefore this Religious affection vvhich nature has implanted, and as ſtrongly rooted in Man as the feare of death or the love of vvomen, vvould be the moſt enormous ſlip or bungle ſhe could commit, ſo that ſhe vvould ſo ſhamefully faile in the laſt Act, in this contrivance of the nature of Man, that inſtead of a Plaudite ſhe vvould deſerve to be hiſſed off the Stage.
The Play, perhaps, has many things amiss:
Well, let us then reduce the point to this,
Let only those that have no failings, hiss.
As the culprits went through the town and plantations they were laughed at, hissed, and hooted by the slaves […]
How well I remember, her stepmother told her, the days when we Wagnerians used to hiss old Brahms—O for the rapturous rebellious days of youth.
gloss: To utter (something) with a hissing sound.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Lies oft o’erthrown with ceaseless Venom spread,
Still hiss out Scandal from their Hydra Head,
the long-necked geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise […]
It turns out that the driver of the red Ferrari that caused the crash wasn't, as I first guessed, a youngster, but a 60-year-old. Clearly, he had energy to spare, which was more than could be said about a panel I listened to around the same time as the crash. Indeed, someone hissed in my ear during a First Magazine awards ceremony in London's imposing Marlborough House on 7 December: "What we need is more old white men on the stage."
2012, Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies, New York: Henry Holt, Part 2, “Master of Phantoms,”
All day from the queen’s rooms, shouting, slamming doors, running feet: hissed conversations in undertones.
gloss: To move with a hissing sound.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The arrow hissed through the air.
The Troops of Troy recede with sudden Fear,
While the swift Javelin hiss’d along in Air.
All shod with steel
We hissed along the polished ice […]
All the preceding afternoon and night heavy thunderstorms had hissed down upon the meads, and washed some of the hay into the river […]
Ennis del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing in around the aluminum door and window frames.
gloss: To emit or eject (something) with a hissing sound.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: The man in white pyjamas hissed soda into his glass.
The radiator bubbled and hissed steam.
He hissed air intently through a gap in his upper teeth.
gloss: To whisper, especially angrily or urgently.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: "Are you quite sure of it," she hissed into his ear, "Mr Fang, Junior?"
"Oh please," she said, "don't let him see us!" I wouldn't let her push me away. "Stop!" she hissed. "He'll see us!"
Related words: hizz
Derived words: hissy
plasmaspheric hiss
boo hiss
hissable
hiss-and-tell
hisser
Hissian
hissing cockroach
hissing hot
hissingly
outhiss
unhissed
Translations: