Sibilant
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. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words
sip,
zip,
ship,
chip, and
Jeep, and the second consonant in
vision. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively, . Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their non-linguistic use in getting one's attention. In the alveolar
hissing sibilants and, the back of the tongue forms a narrow channel to focus the stream of air more intensely, resulting in a high pitch. With the
hushing sibilants, such as English, , , and, the tongue is flatter, and the resulting pitch lower. Because all sibilants are also stridents, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. However, the terms do not mean the same thing. The English stridents are /f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ/.