Her voice was a hiss, like gas escaping from a bottle of soda.

1716, Joseph Addison, The Free-Holder, 16 April, 1716, London: D. Midwinter and J. Tonson, pp. 203-204,
The Actors, in the midst of an innocent old Play, are often startled with unexpected Claps or Hisses; and do not know whether they have been talking like good Subjects, or have spoken Treason.

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

The man came back, and said something in a lower voice, to which the other replied, “she sleeps,” or Ellena was deceived by the hissing consonants of some other words.

The frying pan hissed and sizzled as Ishvar gently slid ping-pong sized balls into the glistening oil.

The crowd booed and hissed her off the stage.

The Play, perhaps, has many things amiss:
Well, let us then reduce the point to this,
Let only those that have no failings, hiss.

As the culprits went through the town and plantations they were laughed at, hissed, and hooted by the slaves […]

How well I remember, her stepmother told her, the days when we Wagnerians used to hiss old Brahms—O for the rapturous rebellious days of youth.

Lies oft o’erthrown with ceaseless Venom spread,
Still hiss out Scandal from their Hydra Head,

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."

2012, Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies, New York: Henry Holt, Part 2, “Master of Phantoms,”
All day from the queen’s rooms, shouting, slamming doors, running feet: hissed conversations in undertones.

The Troops of Troy recede with sudden Fear,
While the swift Javelin hiss’d along in Air.

All shod with steel
We hissed along the polished ice […]

Ennis del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing in around the aluminum door and window frames.

The man in white pyjamas hissed soda into his glass.

He hissed air intently through a gap in his upper teeth.

"Are you quite sure of it," she hissed into his ear, "Mr Fang, Junior?"

"Oh please," she said, "don't let him see us!" I wouldn't let her push me away. "Stop!" she hissed. "He'll see us!"

Hiss

Meaning

Noun

Verb

Related

Rhymes