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ntempt; the object of scorn and derision. [Archaic] I will make this city desolate, and a hissing. Jer. xix. 8.

With a hissing sound.

A fabulous serpent, or dragon. The ancients alleged that its hissing would drive away all other serpents, and that its breath, and even its look, was fatal. See Cockatrice. Make me not sighted like the basilisk. Shak.

To condemn as bad or displeasing, by open expression, as by denuciation, hissing, hooting, etc. You are not so arrant a critic as to damn them [the works of modern poets] . . . without hearing. Pope. Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. Pope.

out her blessings and her gold. Tickell. The nightly mallet deals resounding blows. Gay. Hissing through the skies, the feathery deaths were dealt. Dryden.

A firework, made of damp powder, which makes a fizzing or hissing noise when it explodes.

To make a hissing sound, as a burning fuse.

To make a hissing sound. It is the easfizzling. B. Jonson.

To condemn or express contempt for by hissing. If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them. Shak. Malcolm. What is the newest grief Ros. That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker. Shak.

contracted; mean; illiberal; ungenerous. The long-necked geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise, Because their natures are little. Tennyson. Little chief. (Zoöl.) See Chief hare. -- Little finger, the fourth and smallest finger of the hand. -- Little go (Eng. Universities), a public examination about the…

Simmering; boiling; sizzling; hissing; -- from the sound of boiling fluids. Piping crow, Piping crow shrike, Piping roller (Zoöl.), any Australian bird of the genus Gymnorhina, esp. G. tibicen, which is black and white, and the size of a small crow. Called also caruck. -- Piping frog (Zoöl.), a small American tree fro…

the English alphabet, is a consonanat, and is often called a sibilant, in allusion to its hissing sound. It has two principal sounds; one a more hissing, as in sack, this; the other a vocal hissing (the same as that of z), as in is, wise. Besides these it sometimes has the sounds of sh and zh, as in sure, measure. It g…

Making a hissing sound; uttered with a hissing sound; hissing; as, s, z, sh, and zh, are sibilant elementary sounds. -- n.

To pronounce with a hissing sound, like that of the letter s; to mark with a character indicating such pronunciation.

Utterance with a hissing sound; also, the sound itself; a hiss. He, with a long, low sibilation, stared. Tennyson.

Hissing; sibilant.

Having a hissing sound; hissing; sibilant. [R.] Pennant.

The act of whistling or hissing; a whistling sound; sibilation. [Obs.] A. Brewer.

To boil gently, or with a gentle hissing; to begin to boil. I simmer as liquor doth on the fire before it beginneth to boil. Palsgrave.

To make a hissing sound; as, a flatiron hot enough to siss when touched with a wet finger. [Colloq. U. S.; Local, Eng.]