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Lisp   Listen
verb
Lisp  v. t.  
1.
To pronounce with a lisp.
2.
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. "To speak unto them after their own capacity, and to lisp the words unto them according as the babes and children of that age might sound them again."
3.
To speak with reserve or concealment; to utter timidly or confidentially; as, to lisp treason.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lisp" Quotes from Famous Books



... a great man, a great diplomatist, a great tactician and an illustrious citizen and patriot. His name and his deeds will be cherished and admired as long as the English language is read or spoken, and as long as human lips lisp ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... kind winsome wifie, A clean canty hame, An' smilin' sweet babies To lisp the dear name; Wi' plenty o' labour, An' health to endure, Make time to row round aye The ae ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... fooling, teacher!" in an excited lisp spoke up little Tod Smith, the youngest pupil in the school. "He broke the desk, but—say, teacher! he did it—yes, sir, Andy did the double somersault, just like a real circus actor, and landed square ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... shuffles the shadows about As he gathers the stars in a nest of delight And sets there and hatches them out: The Zhederrill peers from his watery mine In scorn with the Will-o'-the-wisp, As he twinkles his eyes in a whisper of shine That ends in a luminous lisp. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... And—and, if you please," went on Dick hardily, with a glance at the girl, "she hurt her hands putting out a fire just now. I expect my father gave her the money for that. But she must have burnt her hands dreffully!"—Dicky had not quite outgrown his infantile lisp—"and if she's come for stuff to put on them, please I want ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Dieppois[33] towards the English, is, upon the whole, rather gracious than otherwise; because the town profits by the liberality and love of expense of the latter. Yet the young ones, as soon as they can lisp, are put in training for pronouncing the G—— d——; and a few horribly-deformed and importunate beggars are for ever assailing the doors of the hotels. But beggary is nothing like so frightful an evil ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... As a "livelier iris changes on the burnished dove," and the fancy of the young man turns lightly to thoughts of his pretty cousin, so the same renewing spirit touches the "silent singers," and they are no longer dumb; faintly they lisp the first syllables of the marvelous tale. Witness the clear sweet whistle of the gray-crested titmouse,—the soft, nasal piping of the nuthatch,—the amorous, vivacious warble of the bluebird,—the long, rich note of the meadowlark,—the whistle of the quail,—the drumming of the partridge,—the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... for her well-loved child. It was her happiness to be surrounded from earliest infancy with none but holy influences, and to breathe from her very cradle an atmosphere of purity. The first words which she heard, the first she tried to lisp, were the sweet names of Jesus and Mary. The first bent she received was an inclination to virtue; the first and only examples she witnessed were examples of piety. Thus passed the years preceding the dawn of reason, her beautiful soul expanding under the combined ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... thou, my Muse! guid auld Scotch Drink, Whether thro' wimplin worms thou jink, [winding, dodge] Or, richly brown, ream owre the brink, [cream] In glorious faem, [foam] Inspire me, till I lisp an' wink, To sing ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... was where my clergyman of to-day failed utterly," said Mrs. Evelyn;—"he aimed at strengthening that feeling and driving it down as hard as he could into everybody's mind—not a single lisp of anything to do it away or lessen the gloom with which we are, naturally as you say, disposed to invest ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... just big enough for you to sit in. DPB means 'DePosit Byte', and was the name of a PDP-10 instruction that inserts some bits into the middle of some other bits. This usage has been kept alive by the Common LISP ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... What a meeting! What a greeting takes place at the hour of dissolution! How pleasing the contemplation. How inspiring to think of our noble ancestors; our holy ministers and teachers; our fathers and mothers who led us by the hand to the house of God on the Sabbath, who early taught us to lisp the ever precious name of Jesus; who are to-day singing the song of Moses and the Lamb. Let us thank God at this solemn hour, even amid blinding tears, for pious, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... the duty of fostering the first feelings of reverence towards God. The child who learns to lisp his prayers at his mother's knee is started aright. The home must give the first lessons in the love of God and goodness. If it fails, they are likely never ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... have many enemies. The valves are frail and brittle, and only when they gape are they revealed, and the gape is self consciously polite. The sponge embraces the slender mollusc so maternally that rude yawning is forbidden. It may lisp only and in smooth phrases, such as "prunes" and "prisms"; and, moreover, the host further insures it against molestation by the diffusion of an exceptionally powerful odour, which, though to my sense of smell resembles phosphorus, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... forehead crowning, The West leads on a host, to cure the drouth Only when meadow, field, and you are drowning. They gladly hearken, prompt for injury,— Gladly obey, because they gladly cheat us; From Heaven they represent themselves to be, And lisp like angels, when with lies they meet us. But, let us go! 'Tis gray and dusky all: The air is cold, the vapors fall. At night, one learns his house to prize:— Why stand you thus, with such astonished eyes? What, in the twilight, can your mind ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... at such a height that those who were unable to accomplish distant journeys, but had only crossed over into France and Italy, gave themselves great airs on their return. "Farewell, monsieur traveler," says Shakespeare; "look, you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola." The Londoners dearly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... on his own account at Bristol. They are words that have healed thousands of broken hearts, fixed the hopes of the downcast on heaven, and sent the sorrowful on his way rejoicing; and they are words that will live as long as there is a Methodist family upon earth to lisp its song ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... he spoke with a very slight lisp, but that otherwise both his language and his intonations were better than I ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... dear, parting word and parting tear Never pass'd between us;—let me bear the blame, Are you living, girl, or dead? bitter tears since then I've shed For the lips that lisp'd ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... happy times, Fair children of the glowing days, How sweet the music of your lays Is mingled into fairy chimes! Ye lisp again the songs of yore, The stories of my infant years, And throw a sweeter cadence o'er My ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... meat and the drink, though I must say of him that he was a clever fellow, and perfect master of his trade, by which he made a power of money, and bating his not being able to learn Irish, and a certain Jewish lisp which he had, a great master of his tongue, of which he was very proud, so much so that he once told me that when he had saved a certain sum of money he meant to leave off the thimbling business, and enter Parliament, into which he said he ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... hard with dissipation and foul knowledge. He gave the song with all the rank suggestiveness that could be put into it. Joe looked upon him as a hero. He was followed by a little, brown-skinned fellow with an immature Vandyke beard and a lisp. He sung his own composition and was funny; how much funnier than he himself knew or intended, may not even be hinted at. Then, while an instrumentalist, who seemed to have a grudge against the piano, was hammering out the opening bars of a march, Joe's attention was attracted by a woman ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... healthy boy. Fortunately there are no brilliant sayings to record; he did not lisp in periods. Genius was not written upon his brow, nor tied upon his sleeve. He had none of the pale fervor of precocity, or the shyness of premature conceit. He was absorbed in childish things, loved play, shirked his studies, dreamed of a life on the ocean wave, and regarded "Robinson ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton

... left no calling for this idle trade; No duty broke, no father disobey'd; While yet a child, ere yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... sure before he spoke, but his lisp, though slight, betrayed the Jew. His features were coarse, almost brutal; but the restless eyes were so brilliant, the whole face so suggestive of power and character, that, taking him as a whole, the feeling he inspired was admiration, tempered by ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... only as his due, and his great ambition was to make people believe that he had been a wonderfully clever child, and that he had begun to write when he was very young. He says of himself with something of pompousness, "I lisp'd in numbers, for the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... report what he has heard and to translate into the terms of modern speech what he has received in confidence, as it were, he almost blushes, as if he had been guilty of spying on Adam and Eve in their nuptial bower. Alas, if one could but muffle his speech with the unconscious lisp of infancy, or veil and tone his picture to correspond to the perspective of antiquity, he might feel at least that, like Watteau, he had dealt worthily, if not truly, with that ideal age which we ever think of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... of these weighty matters, and therefore I felt myself very incompetent to reason upon them in such a way as was likely to convince and console her. I had been taught, by my excellent mother, to lisp the Lord's Prayer, the Belief, and the Catechism, before I at all knew the meaning of it, and almost before I could speak plainly; I had been bred up in the Christian faith, a strict church-goer, and, such was the force of custom, that perhaps I had not ten times in ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... unimportant that the audience will not pay much attention to them, the playlet writer must give peculiar individuality to every word spoken by the chief characters. By this I do not mean that, merely to show that a character is different, a hero or heroine should be made to talk with a lisp or to use some catch-word—though this is sometimes done with admirable effect. What I mean is that the words given to the chief characters must possess an individuality rising from their inner differences; ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... will make Amends hereafter by some gaudy-day, When your fair child shall wear your costly gift Beside your own warm hearth, with, on her knees, Who knows? another gift of the high God, Which, maybe, shall have learned to lisp you thanks.' ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... rosy-cheeked babe. How it came to pass none could tell, but we all thought that the cot must have been fastened to a board, which became detached from the cot at the very moment when the sea threw it on the land. The babe was just able to lisp her name—'Angela,' which corresponded with the name embroidered on her clothing. This is all we know about her; and I greatly fear that those to whom she belonged perished in the storm. Even the wreckage that was washed ashore furnished no clew; it was part of two different vessels. The little ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... vacated chair and strapped down the receivers. A long, faint whisper, as indistinguishable as the lisp of leaves on a distant hill, trickled into his ears. Ordinarily he would have given up such a station in disgust, and waited for the air to clear. Now he wanted to establish his ability, to demonstrate the acuteness of hearing ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... does not know Buffon from Soufle—Man!—my Letitia—Man! for whom we dress, walk, dance, talk, lisp, languish, and smile. Does not the grave Spectator assure us that even our much bepraised diffidence, modesty, and blushes are all directed to make ourselves good wives and mothers as fast as we can? Why, I'll undertake with one flirt of this hoop to bring more beaux ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler

... word 'prank,' just like he'd never had one single advantage of foreign travel. 'He does indeed—one of those Hammersmith twin louts was with him—the speckled devil with the lisp, I gather—and praise God his bones, at least, are broke ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... that you haven't," added the captain, shaking his head—a significant gesture, which seemed to relate to the future, rather than to the present. "If you lisp a syllable of it, you will need a patch on your skull.—Now," he continued, "what do you ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic

... is the old, old melody of youth and home! Again we are around the old hearthstone. Again do we kneel at mother's knee to lisp the evening prayer. Again she takes us in her arms, and sings to her tired child the soft, low lullaby of childhood's happy days.—Oh, Music, Music! Art Divine! Thou dost move and stir the heart as nothing else can do! Yet never canst thy sweet potency be better used ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh

... the beauty of Adalaisa asleep at the feet of naked Christ. Arnold goes pacing a dark path; there is silence among the mountains; in front of him the rustling lisp of a river, a pool.... Then it is lost and soundless. Arnold ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... to present him to me. She called him Monsieur de la Tourelle, and he began to speak to me in French; but though I understood him perfectly, I dared not trust myself to reply to him in that language. Then he tried German, speaking it with a kind of soft lisp that I thought charming. But, before the end of the evening, I became a little tired of the affected softness and effeminacy of his manners, and the exaggerated compliments he paid me, which had the effect of making all the company turn round and look at me. Madame Rupprecht was, however, pleased ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... adolescent stage: where the lisp or drawl, most popular in the advanced circles, is affected with unquestionable propriety: when growing girls of susceptible sixteen, or thereabout, are meekly subjected to a rigid training and instruction by their older and more sophisticated sisters, when they learn "dauncing" and ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... there it stands as yet,—though its obituary was long ago written after one of the terrible storms that tore its branches,—leafing out hopefully in April as if it were trying in its dumb language to lisp "Our Father," and dropping its slender burden of foliage in October as softly as if it were ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... propothition," says a long, thin, young Gold Leaguer, with a yellow beard and a slight lisp. "I rise to suggest that we send down to Reiley's for all hith bottled beer, and drink the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... the way the railway guards called out "Verney-Montreux!" and "Territey-Chillon!" as they ran alongside the carriages at these stations; I liked the pastel portraits of mademoiselle's grandmothers on the gray walls of our pretty chamber that overlooked the lake, and overheard the lightest lisp of that sometimes bellowing body of water; I liked the notion of the wild-ducks among the reeds by the Rhone, though I had no wish to kill them; I liked our little corner fireplace, where I covered a log of the grand bois every night in the coals, and ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells

... he was wont to say, with his inimitable lisp—"no, thuh, you can't keep a good man down. 'Tain't no use a-talkin', you jeth can't. It don't do me no harm to go back to rubbin' now an' then. It jeth nachully keepth me on good termth with ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... said I, "as that mock literary air which it is so much the fashion to assume. 'Tis but a wearisome relief to conversation to have interludes of songs about Strephon and Sylvia, recited with a lisp by a gentleman with fringed gloves and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Bachelder pleased him less. Knowing Paul's pride in his German ancestry, and having been present when, in seasons of swollen pride, he had reflected invidiously in Andrea's presence on Mexico and all things Mexican, the artist, in a wicked moment, taught her to lisp "Hoch der Kaiser!" lese-majeste that almost caused Paul ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... one star! For, ever, the golden gates stand open, the transit is free For the human to mix with divine; from himself to the Highest to flee. Lo on its knees by the bedside the babe:—and the song that we hear Has been heard already in Heaven! the low-lisp'd music is clear:— For, fresh from the hand of the Maker, the child still breathes the light air Of the House Angelic, the meadow where souls yet unbodied repair, Lucid with love, translucent with bliss, and ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... conclusion, be mentioned that this double-barrelled affair took place in the quaint, old-fashioned, non-ritualistic, semi-Gothic, and many-galleried old village church, of which so few remain now in England, situated close to our cottage, and where our widowed mother had, in our childhood, taught us to lisp our first prayers to heaven, our dead father resting in the ivy-grown and flower-adorned graveyard adjoining. The nuptial knot was tied by Parson Goldwire, as everybody called him in the neighbourhood, assisted by Matthew Jacon, the equally ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... Magsie did. The three most influential papers did not comment upon Miss Clay's acting at all. In two more, little Miss Elsie Eaton and Bryan Masters shared the honors. The Sun remarked frankly that Miss Clay's amateurish acting, her baby lisp, her utter unacquaintance with whatever made for dramatic art, would undoubtedly insure the play a long run. Rachael knew that Warren would see all these papers, but she cut out all the pleasanter reviews and put ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... "to see my darling, the count's sweet child, and press him to my heart. Certainly he must long to see me, too, the young count; no doubt he thinks of me and loves me, as in those days when he would fling his angel-arms round my neck, and lisp 'Anne Liz.' It was music to my ears. Yes, I must make an effort to see him again." She drove across the country in a grazier's cart, and then got out, and continued her journey on foot, and thus reached the count's ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... wheel she keepeth, And her heart within her leapeth, With a burdened, bashful yearning, For the babe's weight on her knee, For the loving lisp of glee, Sweet as larks' throats in the morning, Sweet as hum ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... worth of pulque from a jarrito (little earthen jar); the portly and well-looking padre prior del Carden (the Carmelite friar), sauntering up the lane at a leisurely pace, all the little ragged boys, down to the merest urchin that can hardly lisp, dragging off their large, well-holed hats, with a "Buenos das, padrecito!" (Good-morning, little father!)—the father replying with a benevolent smile, and a slight sound in his throat intended for a Benedicite; and all that might be dull in any other climate brightened and made light and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... a treasure in his wife and daughter," said Mrs. Gibbs, "they keep his secrets so well! Neither of them will lisp a word about this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... till they had found their proper outlet; but we do not hear of his ever having destroyed anything for the mere sake of doing so. His first recorded piece of mischief was putting a handsome Brussels lace veil of his mother's into the fire; but the motive, which he was just old enough to lisp out, was also his excuse: 'A pitty baze [pretty blaze], mamma.' Imagination soon came to his rescue. It has often been told how he extemporized verse aloud while walking round and round the dining-room table supporting himself by his hands, when he was still so small ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... Since Evelyn and I moved to Los Angeles we see a good deal of Tom and his wife. At least once during the winter we run across to his Arizona ranch for a week or two. His boy is just old enough to give his name proudly with a lisp as "Tham Blythe Yeager." ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... his arm into the Reverend's, now, with the confiding and grateful air of a waif who has been longing for a friend, and a sympathetic ear, and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accents of the mother-tongue—and then he limbered up the muscles of his mouth and turned himself loose—and with such a relish! Some of his words were not Sunday-school words, so I am obliged to put ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... father dwelt—a man Of virtuous life, by pious parents bred; [7] 200 And I believe that, soon as I began To lisp, he made me kneel beside my bed, And in his hearing there my prayers I said: And afterwards, by my good father taught, I read, and loved the books in which I read; 205 For books in every neighbouring house I sought, And nothing to my ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... them. As for my Part, I will shew all the World it is not for want of Charms that I stand so long unasked; and if you do not take measures for the immediate Redress of us Rigids, as the Fellows call us, I can move with a speaking Mien, can look significantly, can lisp, can trip, can loll, can start, can blush, can rage, can weep, if I must do it, and can be frighted as agreeably as any She in England. All which is humbly submitted to your Spectatorial Consideration with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... struck him with his cane. John fell as if he were dead. I was looking in at the window, not thinking any harm, and saw it all. I thought he had killed John, and ran away, determined not to tell. I never breathed a lisp of it before, son, and nobody ever knew of that quarrel, only your grandfather and me. I know it troubled him greatly after John died. Oh, I can see that awful paper, as John held it up to the light, as plain as this ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... children. They led the trembling sons and daughters of faith, barefoot and blindfolded, over burning plowshares, stretched them on wheel and rack, tore them limb from limb, sparing not for the groan of age, the lisp of childhood, or the piteous ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... the People: how they come and go, Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb—see— On Piazza, Calle, under Portico And over Bridge! Dear King of Comedy, Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so, Venice, and we who love ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... chosen for an infant singer; but I suppose the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood; and in very bad taste that point was: at least ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... bank he'd stand and drink in every word that flowed from the mouth of that great divine. No Negro woman or man could lisp the name of "Brother Banks" with sweeter accent than George Howe, and no one could sing his praises more earnestly. Who can forget those early days of revivals and religious enthusiasm in Wilmington, and the three great divines who filled the three great pulpits from which the ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... the top of the puffs and frizzes of the modern old lady, but a substantial structure that covered her whole head and was tied securely under her chin. She talked in a sweet old treble with a little lisp, caused by the absence of teeth, and her laugh was as clear and ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall

... right hand or the left we made out faint shadow-pictures of wooded islands that endured but a moment and then deliberately faded into whiteness. They formed on the view exactly as an image develops on a photographic plate. Sometimes a faint lisp-lisp-lisp of tiny waves against a shore nearer than it seemed cautioned us anew not to break the silence. Otherwise we were alone, intruders, suffered in the presence of a brooding nature only as long ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... did not ask from thee, Though that were much—oh, more than earth hath given; None live to bear that gentle name for me, Though one may lisp it now, perchance, in Heaven. I know not even, for I never felt, The quiet yearnings of such love as this; Thou should'st have known a deeper feeling dwelt In the rapt glow ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... apologetic in manner, hesitating, and at times there was a lisp in speech, which might have been an artistic and carefully acquired adjunct of wit, but it was not. Burke was commanding in stature, dignified, suave, and in speech direct, copious and elegant. Goldsmith overworked the minor key, but Burke ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... a pale-faced man, with a slight lisp; and the men despised him because he had not the nerve even to handle them on church parade without priming himself beforehand. I had been vaccinated by virtue of a general order, and in a while my arm became swollen and very painful. ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... on the shoulder," the Port Security Officer said. "Won't you Earthmen ever learn?" The splay-tongued reptile-humanoids of Irwadi always spoke Interstellar Coine with a pronounced lisp which Ramsey found annoying, especially since it went so well with the officious and underhanded behavior for which the Irwadians were famous ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance

... Milton, and Pope, might be said "to lisp in numbers;" and have given such early proofs, not only of powers of language, but of comprehension of things, as, to more tardy minds, seems scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... sickly mien, Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen, Practis'd to lisp, and hang the head aside. Faints into airs, and languishes with pride, On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, 35 Wrapt in a gown, for sickness, and for show. The fair ones feel such maladies as these, When each new night-dress gives a ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... where the good wine is named (in the Bible), there is no lisp of warning, no intimation of danger, no hint of disapprobation, but always of decided approval. How bold and ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... back the outer gate, Spunyarn grasps his friend and companion in sorrow warmly by the hand, his bronzed face brightens with an air of satisfaction, and like pure water gushing from the rude rock his eyes fill with tears. How honest, how touching, how pure the friendly lisp-good bye! "Keep up a strong heart, Tom,—never mind me. I don't know by what right I'm kept here, and starved; but I expect to get out one of these days; and when I do you may reckon on me as your friend. Keep the craft in good ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... her from her birth; knew her strong-hearted mother, and her gentle father, who slipped the noose of life when Claudia was a tiny thing, too young to more than lisp his name. Yet, with his last breath he blessed her, and blessed the man into whose arms he placed her, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... happy jewelled alien men Worked then but as a little leaven; From some more modest palace then The Soul of Dives stank to Heaven. But when they planned with lisp and leer Their careful war upon the weak, They smote your body on its bier, For surety that you ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... there were about a dozen people, men and ladies, young and old, sitting at tea at the end of a long table. A group of men was dimly visible behind their chairs, wrapped in a haze of cigar smoke; and in the midst of them stood a lanky young man with red whiskers, talking loudly, with a lisp, in English. Through a door beyond the group could be seen a light room with ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... had in store at any rate, and, if he really had in his grasp all the news of the rise, he might make by it a plump ten thousand dollars out of Captain Grant's "Orion." But to this end he must be sure that not a lisp of the rise would be published in the morning papers, and he must see Captain Grant and close his bargain for the "Orion's" cargo before the wires should begin to furnish additional news by the "Africa" to the evening papers. They would not, after obtaining ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... Rome are sitting after a full meal, and inquiring in their cups, 'What news from the divine world of poesy?' Hereupon a personage with a hyacinth-coloured mantle over his shoulders brings out some mawkish trash or other, with a snuffle and a lisp, something about Phyllises or Hypsipyles, or any of the many heroines over whom poets have snivelled, filtering out his tones and tripping up the words against the roof of ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... beyond the capacities of learners, that the course here adopted is too philosophic. Such is not the fact. Children are philosophers by nature. All their ideas are derived from things as presented to their observations. No mother learns her child to lisp the name of a thing which has no being, but she chooses objects with which it is most familiar, and which are most constantly before it; such as ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... that they must depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One after the other, barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging rusty chains from hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling down with chuckle of sheaves and lisp of running rigging. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... overhead. After gazing at the horse-racing for a little time, feeling myself somewhat tired, I went up to one of the tents, and laid myself down on the grass. There was much noise in the tent. 'Who will stand me?' said a voice with a slight tendency to lisp. 'Will you, my lord?' 'Yes,' said another voice. Then there was a sound as of a piece of money banging on a table. 'Lost! lost! lost!' cried several voices; and then the banging down of the money, and the 'lost! lost! lost!' were frequently repeated; at last the second voice exclaimed, 'I will try ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... this tiny little girl of three lived in the mud hut through the long days and the longer and darker nights. There was no mother's knee at which to kneel; no one to teach her to lisp her first prayer; no one to tuck her snugly into a little white bed; no one to kiss her before she slept. O, how lonely she must have been! Think of those chilly Labrador nights, when she huddled down on the floor ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace

... the opposition they had encountered, had spared neither age nor sex. I cannot venture to describe the scene of horror and confusion. There were several ladies, and their attendants, and children—among them, infants in arms, or just able to lisp their parents' names. Already they were in the power of my ruffian companions. Shrieks of despair, cries for mercy rose from among them. Tables and chairs, and furniture of all sorts, lay broken on the door. Several dead ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... what do you want?" inquired Nebuchadnezzar, with the kind of lisp that turns a rat ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... peculiar simplicity gives even to the most forcible reasoning and the most brilliant wit an infantine air, generally delightful, but to a foreign reader sometimes a little ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use it. It becomes Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely more silly. We may add, that the verses with which the Mandragola is interspersed, appear to us to be ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... were mild. None could manage her. Her baby training left wholly to neglected and loose-living servants, she had spent her first years in kitchens, garrets, and stables. The stables and the stable-boys, the kennels and their keepers, were loved better than aught else. She learned to lisp the language of grooms' and helpers, she cursed and swore as they did, she heard their songs and stories, and was as familiar with profanity and obscene language as other children are with nursery rhymes. Until she was five years old Sir Jeoffry ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... wants a name— Devoid of truth, of sense and shame, Which smooths its chin and licks its lip, And mounts the pulpit with a skip, Then turning round its pretty face, To smite each fair one in the place, Relaxes half to vacant smile, And aims with trope and polished style, And lisp affected, to pourtray Its silly self in colours gay— Its fusty moral stuff t' unload, And preach itself, and not its God. Thus, wishing, doubting, trembling led, I oped your book, ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte

... with the thickish lisp and slurring of the consonants that distinguished his utterance when he sought to appear more simple ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... illustrations, he brought to the aid of a logical power, which he wielded to a very great extent. Always ready and prompt, his conceptions seemed to me almost intuitive. His voice was fine, softened, and, I think, improved, by a slight lisp, which an attentive observer could discern. The great theatres of eloquence and public speaking in the United States are the legislative hall, the forum, and the stump, without adverting to the pulpit. I have known some of my contemporaries eminently successful ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... not without effort, and our progress gradually became smoother, till he had no need to speak at all. The only sound now was one like the gentle simmer of a saucepan away to port—the lisp of surf I knew it to be—and the muffled grunt of the rowlocks. I broke the silence once to say 'It's very shallow.' I had touched sand ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... who loves to nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been—a most familiar bird— Taught me my alphabet to say— To lisp my very earliest word While in the wild wood I did lie, A child—with ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... "it is all arranged, and I'm the captain. And is it agreed that we won't lisp a word to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... Her tears fell on her lover's face, but they were tears of joy; and with them were mingled tiny bursts of laughter and a thousand endearing words without sense, like the lisp of a little child. She quite forgot that the sight of her joy might sadden the heart of ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France

... Bonaparte, peeping round into his face, speaking with a lisp, as though to a very little child. ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... to find Him by walking straight before us. When the happy day arrives in which you set your feet upon the Path and begin your pilgrimage, the world will know nothing of it; earth no longer understands you; you no longer understand each other. Men who attain a knowledge of these things, who lisp a few syllables of the Word, often have not where to lay their head; hunted like beasts they perish on the scaffold, to the joy of assembled peoples, while Angels open to them the gates of heaven. Therefore, your destiny is a secret between yourself and God, just as love is a secret between ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... possessed, and which were one day to enrapture and electrify his countrymen. He addressed the meeting on one of the passing topics of the day; something in his manner savouring of affectation, something in the semi-Saxon lisp that struggled through his low-toned utterances, something in the total lack of suitable gesture, gave his listeners at the outset an unfavourable impression of the young speaker. He was boyish, and some did not scruple ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... the audience became more enthusiastic and clamored loudly for encores. Elfreda's imitations provoked continuous laughter, and dainty Arline Thayer, looking not more than seven years old, was a delightful success from her first babyish lisp. Her song of the goblin man who stole little children to work for him in his underground cellar, with its catchy chorus of "Run away, you little children," was immediately adopted by Overton, and when later it was noised about that Ruth had written the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... her heart is high, For the Bassarids and the Fauns are nigh, And prosperous leaves lisp busily Over flattered brakes, whence the breezes bring Vext twittering To swell the ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... natural inclinations the body will retain a certain bent, without our knowledge or consent. It was an affectation conformable with his beauty that made Alexander carry his head on one side, and caused Alcibiades to lisp; Julius Caesar scratched his head with one finger, which is the fashion of a man full of troublesome thoughts; and Cicero, as I remember, was wont to pucker up his nose, a sign of a man given to scoffing; such motions as these may imperceptibly ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... the hotel for this stranger. That he knew French was not strange. He had been well educated as a boy and had had his hour with the classics. His godmother, who had been in the household of Prince Joseph Bonaparte, taught him French from the time he could lisp, and, what was dangerous in his father's eyes, filled him with bits of poetry and fine language, so that he knew Heine, Racine and Beranger and many another. But this was made endurable to the father by the fact that, by nature, the boy was a warrior and a scapegrace, could ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker

... scarlet sash! The voice of the incompetent Sally was heard in final exhortation, "Now, mind you be good, Master Justus!" and Master Justus ran straight to the philosopher and saluted him imperatively as "Dada!" which honorable title the other little boy echoed in an imperfect lisp, with an eager desire to be taken up and kissed. The desire was abundantly gratified, and then Mr. Laurence Fairfax said, "This is Laury," and offered him to Bessie for a repetition ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... Budmouth, late as it had grown; the night wore on, and the other doctor came in the small hours. Lucetta had been much soothed by Donald's arrival; he seldom or never left her side; and when, immediately after his entry, she had tried to lisp out to him the secret which so oppressed her, he checked her feeble words, lest talking should be dangerous, assuring her there was plenty of time to tell ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... and crisp, Shone like a wheat-field in the sun, Its swift voice deafened to a lisp, Fell, ere the war was well begun, And waned ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... sharply. She had a heavy voice and a slight lisp, which seemed to make it more impressive and more distinctively her own. Caleb ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... boughs that the girls stopped when they had entered the garden. Ever since Virginia could remember, she had heard threats of cutting down the paulownias because of the litter the falling petals made in the spring, and ever since she could lisp at all she had begged her father to spare them for the sake of the enormous roots, into which she had loved to ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... sickly mien, Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen; Practis'd to lisp, and hang the head aside; Faints into airs, and languishes with pride; On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, Wrapt in a gown, for sickness, and for show. 45 POPE: R. of the Lock, Canto iv., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... offices, live in cares, hazards and scandals, to come home and be fools to us in brags of their dispatches, negotiations, and their wisdoms—as my good dear deceas'd use to entertain me; which I, to relieve myself from, would lisp some silly request, pat him on the face. He shakes his head at my pretty folly, calls me simpleton; gives me a jewel, then goes to bed so wise, so ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... shimmered and shone like a sultana's satin tunic. We could drop a stone from our windows into the sea; we ran dripping from our sea-baths up long stairs, across tiled balconies, into our vast rooms; all day and all night the swish and lisp of the soft tides mingled with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... Katy's baby had been anticipated quite as much as Katy herself, Aunt Betsy bringing from the woodshed chamber a cradle which nearly forty years before had rocked the deacon's only child, the little boy, who died just as he had learned to lisp his mother's name. As a momento of those days the cradle had been kept, Katy using it sometimes for her kittens and her dolls, until she grew too old for that, when it was put away beneath the eaves whence Aunt Betsy dragged it, scouring it with ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... girl's. His trim little figure, clad in picturesque buckskin, suggested a pretty actor in a Wild West play. And yet this boy, Jack Stillwell, was a scout of the uttermost daring and shrewdness. He always made me think of Bud Anderson. I even missed Bud's lisp when ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... silence for a time, but generally ended by addressing to some person older than herself a question which showed that her mind had been working under the influence of a new impression. She very soon got over her childish lisp, and even before she was four years old she spoke with perfect distinctness. She was afraid of her father. As for her mother, she regarded her with a feeling which she could scarcely define, not being afraid of her, but not behaving towards her caressingly. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... the Lord Lieutenant, who was also Commander-in-Chief, the ambition of Sarsfield was gratified by the rank of Earl of Lucan, a title drawn from that pleasant hamlet, in the valley of the Liffey, where he had learned to lisp the catechism of a patriot at the knee of Anna O'Moore. But his real power was much diminished. Tyrconnell, Berwick, Sir Richard Nagle, who had succeeded the Earl of Melfort as chief secretary for King James, all ranked before him at the board, and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... one else. But, though her figure may not be perfect, the London work-girl takes the palm by winsomeness and grace. At seven o'clock every evening you may meet her in thousands in Oxford Street, Villiers Street, Tottenham Court Road, or London Bridge, where the pavements lisp in reply to the chatter of her little light feet. The factory girl of twenty years ago has, I am glad to say, entirely disappeared. She was not a success. She screwed her hair into sausages and rolled them around ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... money?' asked the other, balancing the letter in a careless grip between thumb and finger. 'Nobody asks you to stop to hear yourself described. You were a cad from your cradle; you were a liar as soon as you could learn to lisp, and a sponge from the happy hour when you found the first fool to lend you half a crown. You needn't wait, George, but so long as you are here I will do my best to tell you what you are. You are a fruitful theme, and I could be fluent for a week ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... faculty of observation, are allied to the emotion and tenderness of the Saxon. This fusion had been brought about slowly, when however the time came, its realisation was complete all at once, almost sudden. Yesterday authors of English tongue could only lisp; to-day, no longer ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... characters, at least, display plenty of animation, and the creation of that fantastic person of royal pedigree, Huanebango—'Polimackeroeplacidus my grandfather, my father Pergopolineo, my mother Dionora de Sardinia, famously descended'—with his effort to 'lisp in numbers' of classical accentuation—'Philida, phileridos, pamphilida, florida, flortos'—reveals humour of a finer edge than the mere laughter-raising kind. Against this moderate praise, however, must be ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... no mistake about it," replied Jenkins, from whose speech, strange to say, the lisp and drawl ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... taught to lisp his simple prayers at his mother's knee, he had found strength and comfort in going to the Lord. With the growth of his knowledge of the gospel and his enlarged vision of God's providences, his prayers became a source of power. Uncle Zed had taught him that this trustful reliance on a higher ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... man is come when the crowds lisp his name, and the gold fills his hand, and the women's honeyed adulations buzz like golden bees about his path; but how often is the greatness of the artist gone, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... "Say salaam to the Miss Sahib," and the baby puts his small hand gravely to his forehead, bowing low with a "Talaam, Mees Tahib," then snaps up the prize. I shall miss my little companion. I wonder what will become of him—little brown heir of the ages. Already he can lisp to idols, but he has never even heard of the Christ who ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... the gods, Gabinius!" cried Servius, forgetting to lisp his Greekisms, "don't you know me? Let me go, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... and terrible thing than the prejudice of love. Both you and I have suffered from it. Six years ago, ay, and before that, I felt and resented the growing difference between us. When under your spell, it seemed that I was born to lisp in numbers and devote myself to singing, that the world was good and all of it fit for singing. But away from you, even then, doubts faced me, and I knew in vague fashion that we lived in different worlds. At first in vague fashion, I say; and ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... wanted in the Great House of Shanitha, thcarred man." He spoke the Shainsa dialect with an affected lisp. "Will it pleathe you, come ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... purest orthodoxy. It's got Red Cloud and his acorn song skinned to death. Listen! This is the song of the little East-sider, on her first trip to the country under the auspices of her Sunday School. She's quite young. Pay particular attention to her lisp." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... you, because you lisp: among the pupils of the school, and other people, it often happens that we imitate your preaching to laugh at you," ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... Lord Dereham is more like a little white rat than a man, and swears more than he converses—which would be very shocking if it were not for his lisp, which makes it very funny—needless to say, my diary dear, your Molly is not in love with him—He has ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... clammy-cold shroud on it Hitherward comes, or a flower-like star! Only the hiss of the tempest is loud on it— Hiss, and the moan of a bitter sea bar. Here on this waste, and to left and to right of it, Never is lisp or the ripple of rain: Fierce is the daytime and wild is the night of it, Flame without limit and frost without wane! Trees half alive, with the sense of a curse on them, Shudder and shrink from the black heavy gale; Ghastly, with boughs like the plumes of ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... shortly after my promotion to the office of general superintendent, and the little fellow that is learning to lisp 'papa,' you know, has been named after you, my old, true, and invaluable friend, to whose counsel and kindness I feel I am ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis



Words linked to "Lisp" :   LISP program, LISP compiler, speech defect, enounce, programing language, enunciate, speech disorder, lisper, pronounce, list-processing language, programming language



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