Lisp

//lɪsp// name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act or a habit of lisping.

    "He used to have a terrible lisp before going to a speech therapist."

  2. 2
    a flexible procedure-oriented programing language that manipulates symbols in the form of lists wordnet
  3. 3
    a speech defect that involves pronouncing /s/ like voiceless ‘th’, /θ/ and /z/ like voiced ‘th’, /ð/ wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To pronounce the consonant ‘s’ imperfectly; to give ‘s’ and ‘z’ the sounds of ‘th’ (/θ/, /ð/). This is a speech impediment common among children. intransitive

    "Until the age of 10, Dominic would lisp, but this was fixed by a speech therapist."

  2. 2
    speak with a lisp wordnet
  3. 3
    To speak with imperfect articulation; to mispronounce, such as a child learning to talk. intransitive

    "As yet a Child, nor yet a Fool to Fame, / I liſp'd in Numbers, for the Numbers came."

  4. 4
    To speak hesitatingly and with a low voice, as if afraid. archaic, intransitive

    "Lest when my lisping, guilty tongue should halt."

  5. 5
    to express by the use of simple, childlike language. archaic, intransitive

    "But the fashion spreads deeper and wider; the village is infected and the village green; Amelias and Claras sweep your rooms and cook your dinners, gentle Sophias milk your cows, and if you ask a pretty smiling girl at a cottage door to tell you her name, the rosy lips lisp out Caroline."

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  1. 6
    To speak with reserve or concealment; to utter timidly or confidentially. archaic, intransitive

    "to lisp treason"

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A functional programming language with a distinctive parenthesized syntax, much used in artificial intelligence.
  2. 2
    Alternative form of Lisp. alt-of, alternative

Synonyms

All synonyms
aphoniaartificial voiceassibilateassibilationbroken speechbroken tones

Example

More examples

"Some people caricature gay men as limp-wristed and speaking with a lisp."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English lispen, lipsen, wlispen, from Old English *wlispian (attested in āwlyspian (“to lisp”)), from Old English wlisp, wlips (“stammering, lisping”, adjective), from Proto-Germanic *wlispaz (“lisping”), from Proto-Indo-European *wlis-, *wleys- (“rod”), from *wel- (“to turn, roll”). Cognate with Middle Low German wlispen (“to lisp”), Dutch lispen (“to lisp”), German lispeln (“to lisp”), Danish læspe (“to lisp”), Swedish läspa (“to lisp”).

Etymology 2

A contraction of list processing.

Related phrases

artificial intelligenceprogramming languagespeaking problemspeech impediment

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.