sibilant
C1CEFR level
85/100Rarity: very rare
LiteraryRegister
General adjective
Making or characterised by a soft hissing sound.
There was a sibilant hush as the wave drew back through the shingle.
Medicine noun
A high-frequency fricative such as /s/ or /ʃ/ marked by a hissing quality.
His tongue placement gave each sibilant a slushy, lateralised quality.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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