Definition of "sibilate" []

• To utter or pronounce with a hissing sound. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Nor yet the Austrian cross-breeds who are to be beheld behind the _gulasch_ in the Rue d'Hauteville, nor the semi-Milanese who sibilate the _minestrone_ at Aldegani's in the Passage des Panoramas, nor the Frenchified Spaniards and Portuguese who gobble the _guisillo madrileño_ at Don José's in the Rue Helder, nor the half-French Cossacks amid the _potrokha_ in the Restaurant Cubat, nor the Orientals with the waxed moustachios and girlish waists who may be observed at moontide dawdling over their _café à la Turque_ at Madame"
• "Umbrellas may be 'hedged about' by cobweb statutes; I will not swear it is not so; there may exist laws that make such things property; but sure I am that the hissing contempt, the loud-mouthed indignation of all civilised society, 'would sibilate and roar at the bloodless poltroon who should engage law on his side to obtain for him the restitution of a-- lent Umbrella! ""