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, . (The sounds, as in chip and Jeep, are affricates; 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 "sssst!" or quieting someone using "shhhh!").