Verb

To make a hissing sound.

As I started to poke it, the snake hissed at me.

The arrow hissed through the air.

* Wordsworth

Shod with steel, / We hissed along the polished ice.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=December 14 , author=John Elkington , title=John Elkington , work=the Guardian citation , page= , passage=It turns out that the driver of the red Ferrari that caused the crash wasn't, as I first guessed, a youngster, but a 60-year-old. Clearly, he had energy to spare, which was more than could be said about a panel I listened to around the same time as the crash. Indeed, someone hissed in my ear during a First Magazine awards ceremony in London's imposing Marlborough House on 7 December: "What we need is more old white men on the stage."}}

To condemn or express contempt for by hissing.

* Bible, Ezekiel xxvii. 36

The merchants among the people shall hiss at thee.

* Shakespeare

if the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them

To utter with a hissing sound.

* Tennyson

the long-necked geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise

Verb

(en verb)

To pronounce the sibilant letter ‘s’ imperfectly; to give ‘s’ and ‘z’ the sounds of ‘th’ () — a defect common amongst children.

To speak with imperfect articulation; to mispronounce, as a child learning to talk.

* Alexander Pope

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, / I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.

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

* Drayton

Lest when my lisping , guilty tongue should halt.

To utter with imperfect articulation; to express with words pronounced imperfectly or indistinctly, as a child speaks; hence, to express by the use of simple, childlike language.

* Tyndale

to speak unto them after their own capacity, and to lisp words unto them according as the babes and children of that age might sound them again

To speak with reserve or concealment; to utter timidly or confidentially.

to lisp treason