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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



... except the faint murmur of the sea upon the rocks. His stillness now was as complete as had been his previous activity, and in the one he was as assured as in the other. Some five minutes passed. Again and again, with a measured monotony, came to him the regular lisp of the waves. The grass rustled against his legs as the little wind of morning pushed its way through it gently, and a bird chirped above his head in the olive-trees and was answered by another bird. And just then, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... hard labour should supply; 'But should it fail, 'twill be too late to fly. 'Some Summers hence, if nought our loves annoy, 'The image of my Jane may lisp her joy; 'Or, blooming boys with imitative swing 'May mock my arm, and make the Anvil ring; 'Then if in rags.—But, O my heart, forbear,— 'I love the Girl, and why should I despair? 'And that I love her all the village knows; 'Oft from my pain the mirth of others ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield

... who loves to nod and sing With drowsy head and folded wing, To him a painted paroquet Had been—a most familiar bird— Taught him his alphabet to say, To lisp his ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... to toss bread crumbs to the scarlet fish, laughing to himself in an ugly way. "I wish to punish you? Why, Alixe, only look at him!—Look at his gold wristlets; listen to his simper, his lisp. Little girl—oh, little girl, what have you done to yourself?—for you have done nothing to me, child, that can match ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... She bids the Muse of History twine The chaplet of undying fame, And tell each polish'd land thy worth: The ruder natives of the earth Shall oft repeat thy honour'd name; While infants catch the frequent sound, And learn to lisp the oral tale; Whose fond remembrance shall prevail Till Time has reach'd ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... the Devil had Ubiquity. Hence 'tis they live as Rovers, and defie This or that Place, Rags of Geography. They're Citizens o' th' World, they're all in all; Scotland's a Nation Epidemical. And yet they ramble not to learn the Mode, How to be drest, or how to lisp abroad; To return knowing in the Spanish Shrug, Or which of the Dutch States a double Jug Resembles most in Belly or in Beard; The Card by which the Mariners are Steer'd. No! The Scots-Errant fight, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... Fians waiting there In sharp suspense and half despair ... The morn was still. A skylark hung In mid-air flutt'ring, and sung A lullaby that grew more sweet Amid the stillness, in the heat And splendour of the sun: the lisp Of faint wind in the herbage crisp Went past them; and around the bare And foam-striped sand-banks gleaming fair, The faintly-panting waves were cast By the wan deep ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... was dear to me, With murmur'd tone of evening prayer; When with hands clasp'd upon your knee, And learned to lisp ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... cruel to neutralise such a prodigy—and he is just learning to walk and lisp. Khalid teaches him the first step and the first monosyllable, receiving in return the first kiss which his infant lips could voice. With what joy Najib makes his first ten steps! With what zest would he practise on the soft sands, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... roof, and that, to them, is living. Oh, those purposeless lives! They exist simply because they are in the world and cannot help it. With the girls especially, marriage is the chief aim, and what should be the holy relation is entered upon almost in childhood. As soon as they begin to lisp they are talking of their lovers. A little wee girl came to a teacher's home, and after answering in monosyllables the common questions as to schools and Sunday-schools, there was a lull in the conversation, when ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various

... profits into cattle. 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 ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... guid auld Scotch drink! Whether through wimplin' worms thou jink, Or, richly brown, ream o'er the brink In glorious faem, Inspire me, till I lisp and wink To sing thy name. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... in, and pants that he could not sit down in—dressed like a grasshopper. This human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I entered, adjusted his unseeing eye-glass, and spake in this wise to the clerk. You see, he thought it was "Hinglish, you know," to lisp. "Thir, will you have the kindness to supply me with thome papah and enwelophs!" The hotel clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled the envelopes and paper out of a drawer, threw them across the counter toward the young man, and then turned away to his books. ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... faces, but they are the most determined minaudieres in the whole world. They would think it a mortal sin against good-breeding, if they either spoke or moved in a natural manner. They all affect a little soft lisp, and a pretty pitty-pat step; which female frailties ought, however, to be forgiven them, in favour of their civility and good nature to strangers, which I have a great deal of reason ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... herself with decorum. She was not often thoughtful, and was never so without cause; after remaining silent for a time, she almost always ended by turning to some one of her elders, with a question which showed that her brain was working over a new impression. She very early ceased to lisp, and already in her fourth year she spoke with perfect distinctness. She was afraid of her father; her feeling toward her mother was undefined,—she did not fear her, neither did she fondle her; but she did not fondle ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... offshoot of a fine old parent stock. Well, the Boer is nothing of the kind. He is not in any way degenerate. He is a good fighting man, according to his lights. He does not wear a stand-up collar, nor an eyeglass, nor spats to his veldtschoon. He does not talk with a silly lisp or an inane drawl. Therefore, the useless fellows whom Britain trusted with the important task of watching him and sizing him up counted him as a boor as well as a Boer—a mere country clod. But now, from the rocky hills, these clods, these sons of semi-white savages, laugh ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... weariness or fatigue, but waited patiently, and on the third day he passed me, running joyously along, with his silken hair streaming in the wind, and he singing - God have mercy upon me! - singing a merry ballad, - who could hardly lisp ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... bothered much with trying to pronounce foreign languages," said Dick. "I just wrestle with the words the best I can in plain American. But now—I always thought it rude to mention it before—I understand why you Spaniards seem to lisp, and hiss out your last syllables like secrets. As for the place ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... butterfly affairs that perch on 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

... EMILY—[In her lisp of hidden meanings.] Yes, the family mustn't forget—her condition. [The door from the study is opened and CURT appears. His face shows his annoyance at being interrupted, his eyes are preoccupied. ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill

... lowered itself at the end of his sentences as though he had already abandoned and lost interest in that thought, so that the concluding words were indistinct, beneath the grey beard and mustache. Also at times there was the faintest suggestion of a lisp. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... daughters all the care and affection they bestowed on Minou-Minou. There never was a child had more indulgence; but he deserved it, for his quickness and docility. At the end of a few months he began to lisp a few words of German, as well as his mother, of whom I was the teacher, and who made rapid progress. Parabery was very little with us, but he undertook to be our purveyor, and furnished us abundantly with everything necessary for our subsistence. Canda taught my daughter to make ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... Cowley, 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 no doubt, since a volume of his ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... the melody that slips In lazy laughter from the lips That marvel much if any kiss Is sweeter than the apple's is. Blow back the twitter of the birds— The lisp, the titter, and the words Of merriment that found the shine Of summer-time a glorious wine That drenched the leaves that loved it so, In ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley

... hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... is a sight to see. Loftily domed over with glass, it is at once a conservatory, a vinery, and tropical aviary. Room here for trees even, for miniature palms, while birds of the rarest plumage flit silently from bough to bough among the oranges, or lisp out the sweet lilts that have descended to them from sires that sang in foreign lands. Yonder a fountain plays and casts its spray over the most lovely feathery ferns. The roof is very spacious, and the conservatory occupies ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... 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 ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... to curtsy, whisp- er, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: I've known the day when brats, not quite Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night; Then ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... man he was. I remember the time when in such a scene he would have been perfectly at home; self-restrained, vigilant, and effective. But on this night it was nothing above mere inarticulateness—hoarse and ineffective fury—an almost painful exhibition. Sometimes his lisp became so strong that he was scarcely able to utter the words he desired to bring out. The Prime Minister became "The Primisther," the Chief Secretary the "Cheesesecry," and all this impotence was made the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... if all dinners were as wearisome as this. Rollins finally followed Trennahan's example and devoted himself to Caro Folsom, a yellow-haired girl with babyish green eyes, a lisp, and an astute brain. On Magdalena's left was a blond and babbling youth named Ellis, who made no secret of the fact that he was afraid of his intellectual neighbour; he stammered and blushed every time she spoke to him. He had gone in with Rose Geary, ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... visage about as wooden and inexpressive as the figure-head of a merchantman. Occasionally, it is true, physical defects have been actually conquered, individual peculiarities have been in a great measure counteracted, by rhetorical artifice, or by the arts of oratorical delivery: instance the lisp of Demosthenes, the stutter of Fox, the brogue of Burke, and the burr ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... laughed more than his lips did at a humorous story. His tower-like head and thin, white hair marked him out among a thousand, while any one might swear to his voice again who heard it once, for it had a touch of the lisp and the burr; yet, as the minstrel said, of Douglas, 'it became him wonder well,' and gave great softness to a sorrowful story: indeed, I imagined that he kept the burr part of the tone for matters of a facetious or humorous kind, and brought out the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various

... records exact statements of truth? Not always. The primitive human mind could only lisp its wonderful glimpses of truth in legend and myth. And so in fable and allegory the early Israelites sought to show the power of good over evil, and thereby stimulate a desire for right conduct, based, of course, on right-thinking. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... nursed the late President through an attack of the measles which nearly ended his life. He has often said, that, were it not for my attention, he could not have lived. So you see that the General and myself were very close to one another from the time either of us could lisp until he became President. Here is a picture we had taken together," showing an old daguerreotype. "It does not resemble either of us much now. And yet they do say that we bore in our childhood, and still bear, a striking ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... such forces as these casting their influence over European civilization. {16} The new century was not long in, the Regent Philip of Orleans had not long been in power, before France showed that Versailles had ceased to control her literature. A new Rabelais with an 18th century lisp, Montesquieu, by seasoning his Lettres Persanes with a sauce piquante compounded of indecency and style, succeeded in making the public swallow some incendiary morsels. The King of France, he declared, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... three principal figures of the opening drama. "The jewels were a king's ransom. But I shall know all," he softly smiled, for every attendant of the beautiful recluse now burning to meet her advance spy was a sworn confederate of Ram Lal in a dark brotherhood whose very name no man even dared to lisp! And so the long, blazing day wore away, bringing the hunter and the hunted nearer together. The mysterious bungalow was now alive with the slaves of luxury, while Alan Hawke secretly inspected the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... whites and extremely marvellous pinks, and the skin had the exquisite, incredible softness of a baby's. Next he was struck by her candid, ingenuous, inquiring gaze, and by her thin voice with the slight occasional lisp. The splendid magnificence of her frock and jewels came into play later. Lastly her demeanour imposed itself. That simple gaze showed not the slightest diffidence, scarcely even modesty; it was more brazen than effrontery. She ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... through with the midnight, the cedars were sleeping. Their shadowy tresses outlined in the bright Crystal, moon-smitten mists, where the fountain's heart leaping Forever, forever burst, full with delight; And its lisp on my spirit Fell faint as that near it Whose love like a lily bloomed ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... married Dolly 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 so ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... her ladyship's acquaintance,' replied he in a lisp, evidently enjoying my perplexity, which was every moment becoming ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... of duty; but, as time passed on those visits became his dearest pleasures. The child began to know him, her lovely little face to brighten for him; she had no fear of him, but would sit on his knee and lisp her pretty stories and sing her pretty songs until he was ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)

... 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 ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... be acquainted with, is pretty Mrs. Toss: she is ever in practice of something which disfigures her, and takes from her charms; though all she does, tends to a contrary effect. She has naturally a very agreeable voice and utterance, which she has changed for the prettiest lisp imaginable. She sees what she has a mind to see, at half a mile distance; but poring with her eyes half shut at every one she passes by, she believes much more becoming. The Cupid on her fan and she ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... Dysarthria).—Children just beginning to form sentences stammer, not uttering the sounds correctly. They also, as a rule, lisp for a considerable time, so that the words spoken by them are still indistinct and are intelligible only to the persons most ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... apparel and glow of cheek than the Ayrshire rose or the twisted eglantine. Then suddenly the children gathered about a single portrait of remarkable rich colouring, and little Lady Margaret came running and saying with a lisp,— ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... Heavenly Teacher has given us the very words we are to take with us as we draw near to our Father. We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and fulness of the Eternal Life. So simple that the child can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give. A form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayer, and yet always draws us back to itself as the deepest utterance of our ...
— Lord, Teach Us To Pray • Andrew Murray

... yesterday. And then father 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

... arrangements for starting in the world together, when her cheeks were ruddier than now, when wealth and fame and happiness seemed lying just before me, ready to be gathered in, and farther away still, to a gentle, blue-eyed mother—now long gone—teaching her child to lisp his first simple prayer. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... and I'm cheered again; Thine own bright smile illuminates my way, And one by one the gathered clouds depart, Till not a shadow lies upon my path. Night, with its long and sombre shadows, treads Upon the steps that morn and noon have trod; And, as our children gather round my knee, And lisp those evening prayers thy lips have taught, I cannot but believe that thou art near. But when they speak of "mother," when they say "'T is a long time since she hath left our side," And when they ask, in their soft ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... 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

... and hang on to his neck until he groaned, then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe. I used to listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door flung back or opened quietly—you never could tell which; and her voice, with a little lisp, 'Are you better today, Mr. Brune? What funny things you say when you're delirious! Father says you've been ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... propagandist plays, of which the manifest and glaring untruth is working mischief to the national mind. A type of such a play is familiar enough in these days when we like to ridicule the West Briton. We are served up puppets representing the shoneen with a lisp set over against the patriot who says all the proper things suitable to the occasion. Now, such a play serves no good purpose, but it has a certain bad effect. It does not give a true interpretation of life; it enlightens ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... 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

... continued: 'While as many as fifty good gossipers predicted daily the marriage of Bolt to some aristocratic belle, there came along a lady of the name of Mrs. Bolt. This person, whose name Mr. Bolt had been extremely careful not to lisp, caused a desperate sensation among his admirers. My Lady Longblower was seen to cool away like liquid tallow, while not a few who had been equally fervent just before, said it was a very impertinent thing in Mr. ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... him, giving him an exceedingly dispirited look. His hair relieved this somewhat, for it was white and always stood gaily on end, defying brush and comb. Daniel Arker, a sturdy black-haired lad, would have done fuller justice to the passage that fell to Abraham, for the Spiker boy with his gentle lisp never shone in elocution; but our reading class is a lottery, as we go from scholar to scholar down the line. The lot falling to him, Abraham pushed himself up from the bench, grasped his book fiercely with both hands, and fixed his ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... 'I would not allow her to learn lessons such as those in a land ridden by priests, and polluted by the idolatry of Rome. It is here, here in Barchester, that she must first be taught to lisp those holy words. Oh, that you could ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... is; although Shakspeare has done a good deal for the stage. James Bromley has seen the Overland line grow up from its ponyicy; and as Fitz-Green Halleck happily observes, none know him BUT TO LIKE HIS STYLE. He was intended for an agent. In his infancy he used to lisp the refrain, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... you ever lisp a word to any living soul till I'm safely married to CUPID, I'll kill you, dead ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various

... like this, I would go upstairs, and stand before the ikons, and say with a rapturous feeling, "God bless Papa and Mamma!" and repeat a prayer for my beloved mother which my childish lips had learnt to lisp-the love of God and of her blending strangely in a ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... have not the means to feel and recognise them: and of such 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 happen in us. There are other artificial ones which ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... 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 ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... who was a small stout man, with a black cap of dubious cut, protested vehemently against such materialistic measures. Let them put their trust in Cultur! To talk Hebrew—therein lay Israel's real salvation. Let little children once again lisp in the language of Isaiah ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... children have to work anywhere as they do here," he fairly shouted, "here where they rob the cradle for workers, where the little voices become sad and bitter 'most as soon as they can lisp, where the brightness o' childhood fades out before its time, an' where its only world is the mill, the shop, an' the fact'ry. Their tiny bones unset, they make them stand in one position all day long until you ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... 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

... 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

... had seen, girt on three sides with lofty, rocky mountains; and on the fourth side by the blue waters of the Fiord. I looked on Bergen with the liveliest interest, because its name was familiar to me when a child, and I used to lisp the word before I could walk steadily; for in those young days of waywardness my old schoolmistress, whose peaked nose and malicious heart are still a vivid truth, would threaten to give me to the fishermen at Bergen who, she said, would take and toss me into the Maelstrom. With an eagerness akin ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... whose rich mine of wit we here behold As porcelain earth, more precious, 'cause more old; Who, like an aged oak, so long hath stood, And art religion now as well as food: Though thy grey Muse grew up with elder times, And our deceased grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes; Yet we can sing thee too, and make the lays Which deck thy brow look fresher with thy praise. * * * * * Though these, your happy births, have silent past More years than some abortive wits shall last; He still writes new, who once so ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic

... not analyze she hesitated to ask him who they were. They had rather a rude manner of staring —especially the men—and the air of deriving infinite amusement from that which went on about them. One of them, a young man with a lisp who was addressed by the singular name of "Toots," she had overheard demanding as she passed: who the deuce was the tall girl with the dark hair and the colour? Wherever she went, she was aware of them. It was foolish, she knew, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... had been 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 ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... 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 as we ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... fields of corn, The living silence dwelleth, and the gray Sweet earth-mist, while afar the lisp of spray Breathes from the ocean like a Triton's horn. Open thy lattice, for the gage is won For which this earth has journeyed though the dust Of shattered systems, cold about the sun; And proved by sin, by mighty lives impearled, ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... Born in orders other than humanity and growing old in their respective acts, even thus they become human beings that are, of course, ordained to return. Coming to sinful births and becoming Chandalas or human beings that are deaf or that lisp indistinctly, they attain to higher and higher castes, one after another in proper turn, transcending the Sudra order, and other (consequences of) qualities that appertain to Darkness and that abide in it in course of migrations in this world.[106] Attachment ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... But, unfortunately, what with his real emotion and the intoxication of an audience, he read it extravagantly, and interpolated a child's lisp (on no authority whatever), and a simulated infantile delivery, which, I fear, at first provoked the smiles rather than the tears of his audience. Nevertheless, at its conclusion the little note was handed round the party, and then there was ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... these tremendous questions with an effeminate lisp, and harangued on them with small feeble gesticulations of pale dirty fingers covered ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he could not sit down in—dressed like a grasshopper! Well, this human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I came in. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it's "Hinglish, you know," to lisp: "Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome papah and thome envelopehs!" The clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast them across the counter and turned away to his books. You should have seen that specimen ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... 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 strongly ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... note, which fell when Lawrence stood erect, but rose to a shrill overtone when he bent his head: sometimes one would have thought the river was going down in spate, and then the volume of sound dwindled to a mere thread, a lisp in the air. Lawrence was observing these phenomena with a mind vacant of thought when he heard footsteps brushing through the grass by the field path from the village. Val had ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... many were the jokes that rebounded from his theme, whether in hall or kitchen. It was pleasant to watch his little grey eye, and the twinkling lashes, as they rose and fell, varying the expression of his lips. A slight lisp gave an air of simplicity to his ditties, which never failed to charm his auditors. He could throw the simplest expression over his features, which made the keen edge of his rebukes infinitely more cutting and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... thoughts: And for my strange petition I 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

... 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 ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... the habit of applying to it, in common with Englishmen, that endearing appellation "Home," and I believe you still continue to do so in the provinces. Our nursery tales, taught our infant lips to lisp in English, and the ballads, that first exercised our memories, stored the mind with the traditions of our forefathers; their literature was our literature, their religion our religion, their history our history. The battle of Hastings, the murder of Becket, the ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... 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 my evening road! Yet still one joy remains: that not obscure ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... imprudent to risk an indiscretion, he took care to talk "for safety." With him, a secret was a secret, and he could be as silent as an unopened Egyptian tomb. Certain diplomatic affairs he did not lisp, even to his Secretary of State. So far as appears, John Hay knew nothing about the President's interviews with the German Ambassador Holleben, which forced William II to arbitrate. And he sometimes prepared a bill for Congress with out consulting his Cabinet, for fear that the stock jobbers might ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... come to think and will and do for himself,—and let no man dream that day will never come,—then the part he plays will not be one of sudden learning, but words and thoughts he has been taught to lisp in his race-childhood. To-day the ferment of his striving toward self-realization is to the strife of the white world like a wheel within a wheel: beyond the Veil are smaller but like problems of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... "I thought I could make you come." The girl spoke in a low tone, a kind of half-whisper. She did not lisp, yet her articulation of one or two consonants was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Messalina? What an unfavourable view of human nature! What? King Cheops was not a perfect monarch? Oh, you railer at royalty and slanderer of all that is noble and good! When this book is concluded, I shall change the jaundiced livery which my books have worn since I began to lisp in numbers, have rose-coloured coats for them with cherubs on the cover, and all the characters within shall ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... ev'n for thy soul, to thwart me further! None of your arts, your feigning, and your foolery; Your dainty squeamish coying it to me; Go—to your lord, your paramour, be gone! Lisp in his ear, hang wanton on his neck, And play your monkey gambols o'er to him. You know my purpose, look that you pursue it, And make him yield obedience to my will. Do it—or woe ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... laborer, and continued to work thus for several years, until, possessed of a few dollars, he went to the interior of the state and bought a small place near Waxhaw. About this time, 1767, Andrew Jackson, Jr., was born, and during the next year—by the time the infant could lisp the name of his parent—the father fell sick of fever and died. Mrs. Jackson, left with three small children, in an almost wild country, where nothing but toil of a severe and arduous kind could provide a subsistence, was indeed in a most grievous situation. But she appears to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... live in my billet, he was able to find two valuable fountain pens and one stylographic in no time. The exigencies of war necessitate some little irregularity now and then; but how, I asked him, did he justify this excess of zeal? J. B. is distinguished by a lisp among other things. "It'th betht to be on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

... not been quite 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 ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... man hath been set upon thee by Athena. Foolish one, he knoweth not in his heart that no man liveth long who fighteth with the gods; no children lisp 'father' at his knees when he returneth from war and dread conflict. Therefore, albeit he is so mighty, let him take heed lest a better than thou meet him, for one day his prudent wife shall wail in ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... 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 never set eyes upon her. Then a strange ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... pleasures and affection. The spring was melting into summer, and you, my little companion, began to smile—that smile made hope bud out afresh, assuring me the world was not a desert. Your gestures were ever present to my fancy; and I dwelt on the joy I should feel when you would begin to walk and lisp. Watching your wakening mind, and shielding from every rude blast my tender blossom, I recovered my spirits—I dreamed not of the frost—'the killing frost,' to which you were destined to be exposed.—But I lose ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... perhaps, among the first that vibrate on the ear of man; it is reiterated to him incessantly; he is taught to lisp it with respect; to listen to it with fear; to bend the knee when it is reverberated: by dint of repetition, by listening to the fables of antiquity, by hearing it pronounced by all ranks and persuasions, he seriously believes all men bring the idea with them into the world; he thus confounds a ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... his friendship with Josephina began. Perhaps it was the contrast between himself and the little woman who hardly came up to his shoulder and who seemed about fifteen when she was already past twenty. Her soft voice with its slight lisp came to his ears like a caress. He laughed when he thought of the possibility of embracing that graceful, slender form; it would break in pieces in his pugilist's hands, like a wax doll. Mariano sought her out in the drawing-rooms which she and her mother were accustomed to frequent, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... miles. On looking about, we found in the sand the stumps of cedar pickets, forming an antique enclosure, which, I judged, must have been the first site of the Mission of St. Ignace, founded by Pierre Marquette, upwards of a hundred and eighty years ago. Not a lisp of such a ruin had been heard by me previously. French and Indian tradition says nothing of it. The inference is, however, inevitable. Point St. Ignace draws its name from it. It was afterwards removed and fixed at the blunt peninsula, or headland, which the Indians call Peekwutino, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... with the shining floors, the hooded furniture, the windows gaping without their curtains, the shadows and broad squares of light, the little whispers and rattles that doors and cupboards gave, the swirl of the wind as it sprang released from corners and crevices, the lisp of some whisper, "I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" that, nevertheless, again and again defeated expectation. How could he but enjoy the fine field of affection ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... I cannot court thy sprightly eyes With a base-viol plac'd betwixt my thighs, I cannot lisp, nor to a fiddle sing, Nor run upon a ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... newly discovered beauty gives me, and keeping up my dignity and coherence with an effort. My attention is constantly being distracted to note how prettily she moves, to wonder why it is I never noticed the sweet fall, the faint delightful whisper of a lisp in her voice before. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... brown eyes reverently and said, 'It is something good,' speaking, as he always did, in a baby lisp inimitable here. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and 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 burden ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... autumn also. Little Jack walked now and was beginning to lisp an occasional word, making of himself a veritable fairy in the household. With the close of the warm weather he grew less and less fretful, and when the first snow fell he became as happy and active as a kitten. The mother had kept him with her ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... through the corridors and galleries of the Louvre and the Palais Royal, and whenever he had sought to point her out to some one, to discover her name, lo, she was gone! Tormenting mystery! Ah, that soft lisp of hers, those enchanting caprices, those amazing extravagances of fancy, that wit which possessed the sparkle of white chambertin! He would never forget that summer night when, dressed as a boy, she had gone with him swashbuckling along ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... in hopes and fears In joys and griefs the same— Since first we learned in childhood's years To lisp each other's name. ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... grey Muse grew up with elder times, And our deceased Grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes, Yet we ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... camp at this time a boy named To' Muda Long, who was the eldest son of one of the great up-country Chiefs. He was returning from Singapore with the Raja, to whom he had fled after some escapade of his had excited the paternal wrath. He was a nice-looking youngster, with a slight lisp, and a manner as soft as floss-silk, and he was always smartly dressed in pretty Malay garments. We travelled together for more than three months, and I got to know him pretty well, and took something ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... in 1916. He was beginning to lisp a little along that restless line of thought in 1910. And in 1940 he may be sitting in that same sanctum with walls of heavy books on two sides of him, telling somebody just how it came to be that an economic cyclone on the prairies once ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... they understand not,"—and go about asking our blind guides, whether Pope was a poet or not? It will never do. Such persons, when you point out to them a fine passage in Pope, turn it off to something of the same sort in some other writer. Thus they say that the line, "I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came," is pretty, but taken from that of Ovid—Et quum conabar scribere, versus erat. They are safe in this mode of criticism: there is no danger of any one's tracing ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... goddess Minerva has excited this man. Infatuate! nor does the son of Tydeus know this in his mind, that he is by no means long-lived who fights with the immortals, nor ever at his knees will sons lisp a father's name, as he returns from war and dreadful battle. Therefore, let the son of Tydeus now, though he be very brave, have a care, lest a better than thou fight with him: lest at a future time AEgialea, the very prudent daughter of Adrastus, the noble spouse of horse-taming ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... Ann, my good Ann, thou who first taught me to lisp a thanksgiving and a request, kneel here by my side—and you, too, mademoiselle; though of a different creed, we have a common God! Cousin John, you pray often, I know, though so little apt to show your emotions; there is a place for you, too, with those of your blood. I know ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... numbers of the "Well-Spring" had fallen prey to my insatiable appetite for literature. With the story of the small boy who stole a pin, repented of and confessed that crime, and then became a good and great man, I was as familiar as if I myself had invented that ingenious and instructive tale; I could lisp the moral numbers of Watts and the didactic hymns of Wesley, and the annual reports of the American Tract Society had already revealed to me the sphere of usefulness in which my grandmother hoped I would ultimately ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... of his fathers, to sojourn in the land of the stranger, and who remembers and babbles at last—ere the silver cord of memory is utterly and finally loosed—one language only, and that some few words merely, in the long unspoken tongue which he first learned to lisp in his earliest infancy. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... never even smiled, but fixed his eyes in a rather unpleasant manner upon Joachim as he raised them from his books. Still he was an irresistible subject for the Mimic; for, though he learnt his lessons without a mistake, and always obtained the Master's praise, he read them with so strong a lisp, and this was rendered so remarkable by his loud, deep voice, that it fairly upset what little prudence Joachim possessed; and, as he returned one day to his seat, after repeating a copy of verses in the manner I have described, Joachim, who was not far off, echoed the last two lines with ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... in festoons from high parky nooks that sheltered couples, down to the water-slapped edge of docks, where the tidey surf had a thick, inarticulate lisp, as if what it had to say might only be comprehended from ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... beginning to lisp the language of Canaan, and "they that kept the fair were men of this world." What wonder if she and her thoroughly time-serving mother found it impossible ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... 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 that his head ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... she greeted her. "Goody! What a relief! I've been worrying about what you'd be like, and just praying you wouldn't have spectacles and talk with a lisp. Miss Todd gave me to understand you were a peach, and I might think myself in luck to room with you, but you never can trust head mistresses till you see for yourself. She's told me the truth, though, after all. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... Union, because the law applied to all. They abolished slavery in all the Northern States—in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island; and it was expected that the whole of the states would follow the example. When I was a child, I never heard a lisp in defence of slavery. [Hear, hear, hear!] Every body condemned it; all looked upon it as a great curse, and all regarded it as a temporary evil, which would soon melt away before the advancing light of truth. [Hear, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... thinks beautiful, and repeats it, tossing up pretty eyes. Also the lover's petition: 'Give me purity to be worthy the good in her, and grant her patience to reach the good in me.' 'Tis quite taking to hear her lisp it. Be sure that I am repeating the petition! I make her read me her choice passages. She has not a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... did so there was almost always good reason for it; then she would keep 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 ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... 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, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... driven to it, by the mad passion to find an ultimately satisfying woman. I daresay he was sincere enough. Heaven help me, I daresay he was sincere enough in his love for Mrs Maidan. She was a nice little thing, a dear little dark woman with long lashes, of whom Florence grew quite fond. She had a lisp and a happy smile. We saw plenty of her for the first month of our acquaintance, then she died, quite quietly—of ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... 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 ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... that quiet hamlet, and the roll of honour in the little grey stone church grows longer and longer. In the big house on the hill, at sunrise and at sunset, the young Lady of the Manor stands at the bedside of her little son, and hears him lisp his simple prayers to God, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various

... fair, Was Edric, Egbert's cherished heir; The plaything of the homestead he, Now fondled on his grandame's knee; Or as beside the hearth he sat, Oft sporting with his snow-white cat; Now by the chaplain taught to read, And lisp his Pater and his Creed; Well nurtured at his mother's side, And by his father trained to ride, To speak the truth, to draw the bow, And all an English Thane should know, His days had been as one bright dream— As smooth as his own river's stream! Until, at good ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "Tom!" or "Steward!" according to the terms of friendship and familiarity on which you may stand with this dignitary, who, by the way, has a vote on board worth canvassing for;—I say bawl out, because, firstly, your mincing and Clarendon-like lisp of "Waiter!" would not be heard by one used to listen to the rush of the tempest and the shriek of the scourged Atlantic; also, for that your stirring call may remind some wretched skulker of a circumstance ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... earth his parents got the name, I cannot tell—was four or five years older than Rita. He was a manly boy, and when my little friend could hardly lisp his name she would run to him with the unerring instinct of childhood and nestle in his arms or cling to his helpful finger. The little fellow was so sturdy, strong, and brave, and his dark gray eyes were so steadfast and true, that she feared no ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... they are so 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; their speech ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... over free with the 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 could get at any time, through the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... beauty had as an aureole to illuminate it and to set it off a manner that was wholly devoid of mannerisms—of those that men and women think out and exhibit to give added charm to themselves—tricks of cuteness, as lisp and baby stare; tricks of dignity, as grave brow and body always carried rigidly erect; tricks of sweetness and kindliness, as the ever ready smile and the warm handclasp. Susan, the interested in the world about her, Susan, the self-unconscious, had ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... the ivied wand, "The sword in myrtles drest," Each legend of the shadowy strand Now wakes a vision blest; As little children lisp, and tell of Heaven, So thoughts beyond their thought to ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... pinafores. They were the schoolmates of my childhood, and many of them must have come out of their graves to run by my side that morning in Rydal. I had not thought of them for years. Little Emily R—— read from her book with a chirping lisp:— ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... dear Vanity, I whispered to you before that the poor Baboo often suffers from a slight aberration of speech which prevents his articulating the truth—a kind of moral lisp. Lord Lytton could not have been alluding to this; for it was only yesterday that I heard an Irishman speak the truth to Lord Lytton about some little matter—I forget what; cotton duty, I think—and Lord Lytton said, rather curtly, "Why, you have often told me this before." So Lord Lytton ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... carefully taught in Delsarte's school. The professor's first care was to correct any tendency to lisp, which he did by temporarily substituting the syllables te, de, over and over again, for the faulty R. This substitution brought the organ back to the requisite position for the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... Jo wandered through the airs at her own sweet will, always coming out at the wrong place with a croak or a quaver that spoiled the most pensive tune. They had always done this from the time they could lisp... ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... 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, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... Mr. Lee was taught it by me. To prove this farther, I have printed Bartoline's part in that manner of spelling by which I taught it Mr. Lee. They who have no teeth cannot pronounce many letters plain, but perpetually lisp and break their words, and some words they cannot bring out at all. As for instance th is pronounced by thrusting the tongue hard to the teeth, therefore that sound they cannot make, but something like it. For that reason you will often find ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... go down and talk things over with the pal when he comes," said another voice that was very smooth, and had a lisp. Clo deduced that it was the voice ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... spoke up Weil briskly. "I've got no lawyer, commissioner." His speech was the elaborated and painfully emphasized English of the self-taught East Sider. It carried in it just the bare suggestion of the racial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to the menacing Hibernian purr of Donohue's heavier voice. "I kind of thought I'd conduct ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... 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 ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... cure a clap: All sciences a fasting Monsieur knows, And, bid him go to hell, to hell he goes. [r]Ah! what avails it, that, from slav'ry far, I drew the breath of life in English air; Was early taught a Briton's right to prize, And lisp the tale of Henry's victories; If the gull'd conqueror receives the chain, And flattery prevails, when arms are vain![G] [s]Studious to please, and ready to submit, The supple Gaul was born a parasite: Still to his int'rest ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... is so artfully merged with its immediate surroundings that even though you know its precise location it still eludes you. Only yesterday the last finishing-touches were made upon the nest, and this morning, as I might have anticipated from the excess of lisp and twitter of the mother bird, I find the first pretty ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... symbol, and the epic song, 110 (Unknown the character, forgot the tongue,) With each unconquer'd chief, or fainted maid, Sunk undistinguish'd in Oblivion's shade. Sad o'er the scatter'd ruins Genius sigh'd, And infant Arts but learn'd to lisp and died. 115 Till to astonish'd realms PAPYRA taught To paint in mystic colours Sound and Thought. With Wisdom's voice to print the page sublime, And mark in adamant the steps of Time. —Three favour'd youths her soft attention share, 120 The fond ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... mad with rage at 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 ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... Wilmington, Delaware, when she was about sixteen years old. But her mind was so full of poesy that there was no room in it for ordinary matters and things, and the duties of a student soon became so irksome that she left both the institutions in disgust. Of her it may be truly said, "she lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came," for she composed verses at four years of age, and published poems at ten. Her first effusions appeared in a local paper at Reading, Pa. Being a born poetess, her success as a writer was assured from the first, and her warmth of expression ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... 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 Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: 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 that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... barren woman, and thence resulted her misery. For seven weary seasons had she lived in the lodge of her husband; and while his seven other wives had each children at her knee, crying, "My mother!" there was none to address her by that tender name, and to lisp in childish tones its delight, when she returned from the labours of the field of maize—and to bestow its innocent caresses upon her after the separations which unavoidably take place in forest life. Thence arose the extreme harshness ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... sickly mien, Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen; Practised to lisp, and hang the head aside, Faints into airs, and languishes with pride; On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, Wrapp'd in a gown, for sickness, and for show. The fair ones feel such maladies as these, When each new ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... They all raised their hands. The Deacon then repeated a short piece of poetry, his wife followed, and then all the children one after another, even down to Bob—a little three-year-old, who just managed to lisp out, with a charming mixture ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... 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 ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... deeds, who with his bow Assail'd the Gods, who on Olympus dwell. The blue-ey'd Pallas, well I know, has urg'd Tydides to assail thee; fool and blind! Unknowing he how short his term of life Who fights against the Gods! for him no child Upon his knees shall lisp a father's name, Safe from the war and battle-field return'd. Brave as he is, let Diomed beware He meet not some more dangerous foe than thee. Then fair AEgiale, Adrastus' child, The noble wife of valiant Diomed, Shall long, with lamentations ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... my notion of a reassuring appellative. And what are you to make of Odont. crisp. Sanderae, which, whomsoever "Sanderae" may be, I don't want to "crisp" him; "A sport of nature unequalled" they call him, and no doubt his name is, for I can neither clearly articulate, stutter or lisp him. I've not a doubt that, whoever he is, he is probably liked and considered by some a gem. Gyp. Chamberlainianum has a political sound, and has a strong savour of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various

... the wilds, often to a great distance from their native village. On such occasions, fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden, often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care of two or three infirm old people. The infant progeny, some of whom are beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and those still farther advanced, romping and playing together, the children of nature, through the live-long day, BECOME HABITUATED TO A LANGUAGE OF THEIR OWN. The more voluble condescend ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... the tones of that soft voice, in which sounded sometimes a sort of gentle lisp, like the hissing of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... child can speak he should be made to lisp the noble words of truth, and to love it, and to abhor a lie! What a beautiful character he will then make! Blessed is ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse



Words linked to "Lisp" :   list-processing language, LISP program, articulate, programming language, say, speech disorder, enounce, sound out, lisper



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