LISP • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Lisp

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/lɪsp/ Listen

noun

Lisp n. The habit or act of lisping. See Lisp, v. i., 1. "I overheard her answer, with a very pretty lisp, "O! Strephon, you are a dangerous creature.""

LISP n. (Computers) A high-level computer programming language in which statements and data are in the form of lists, enclosed in parentheses; used especially for rapid development of prototype programs in artificial intelligence applications.

verb

Lisp v. t.

To pronounce with a lisp.

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."

To speak with reserve or concealment; to utter timidly or confidentially; as, to lisp treason.

Lisp v. i. (past & past part. lisped; pres. part. lisping)

To pronounce the sibilant letter s imperfectly; to give s and z the sound of th; a defect common among children.

To speak with imperfect articulation; to mispronounce, as a child learning to talk. "As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."

To speak hesitatingly with a low voice, as if afraid. "Lest when my lisping, guilty tongue should halt."

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Etymology of 'Lisp'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Lisp" Quotes from Famous Books

... he opened the door. Significant as was his first hasty look round the room, he recovered at sight of me all his habitual SANG-FROID. He saluted me, and spoke coolly, though rapidly. But he panted, and I noticed in a moment that he had lost his lisp. ...

— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... what a weary race my feet have run, Since first I trod thy banks with alders crowned, And thought my way was all through fairy ground, Beneath thy azure sky and golden sun, Where first my Muse to lisp her notes begun! While pensive Memory traces back the round, Which fills the varied interval between; Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene. Sweet native stream! those skies and suns so pure No more return, to cheer ...

— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... speak plain. Grandma couldn't speak plain. They lisp. They talk fast. Sound so funny. Mama and auntie speak well. Plain as I do now. They was up wid Mars White's childern more. Mars White sent his childern to pay school. It was a log house and they had a lady teacher. They had a accordion. Mars Marion's neighbor had ...

— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... many another was but a student of the letter, not of the life; many another was but a spiritual swashbuckler, pompous in his demeanour and cryptic in his utterance; some, led by an abhorrent fantasy, may have wandered along the path that goes to the Venus-berg and have striven to lisp a formula that would transform the earth into Gehenna rather than into Heaven. But, beside this mass of imposture, of folly, of elegant idleness and of corruption, the a rebours of a spiritual outpouring, there was a real mysticism ...

— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh

... the southwest. But there it stood, and 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.

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