Sibilance

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being sibilant: a hissing quality. countable, uncountable

    "The Pet Shop Boys are yet another synth-pop duo, albeit one that is not quite out of the closet. […] In past interviews, however, they [the Pet Shop Boys] have referred to their sound as "specifically gay disco," and their lyrics have that certain queenly something that lead singer Neil Tennant sings with an adorable sibilance."

Example

More examples

"The Pet Shop Boys are yet another synth-pop duo, albeit one that is not quite out of the closet. […] In past interviews, however, they [the Pet Shop Boys] have referred to their sound as "specifically gay disco," and their lyrics have that certain queenly something that lead singer Neil Tennant sings with an adorable sibilance."

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