Sibilance is a
manner of articulation of
fricative and
affricate consonants, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the
teeth, which are held close together; a consonant that uses sibilance may be called a
sibilant, or a
strident. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the
English words
sip,
zip,
ship,
chip, and
jump, and the second consonant in
vision. The symbols in the
International Phonetic Alphabet used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively, . More specifically, the sounds , as in
chip and
jump, are affricates, whereas the rest are fricatives. Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their non-linguistic use in getting one's attention (e.g. calling someone using "psst!" or quieting someone using "shhhh!").