mussitation
English edit
Etymology edit
Learned borrowing from Latin mussitātiō (“soft noise made by dogs, or (Late Latin) people”) + English -ion (suffix denoting a condition or state). Mussitātiō is derived from mussitātus (“kept quiet; having been kept quiet; murmured, muttered; having been muttered”) (see further at mussitate) + -iō (suffix forming abstract nouns from verbs).[1][2]
Pronunciation edit
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /mʌsɪˈteɪʃn̩/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˌmʌsɪˈteɪʃ(ə)n/
- Rhymes: -eɪʃən
- Hyphenation: mus‧sit‧at‧ion
Noun edit
mussitation (countable and uncountable, plural mussitations)
- (chiefly archaic or obsolete) Speech conducted in a hushed manner, akin to a murmur or a whisper.
- 1989, Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel:
- The mussitation of the crowd dropped instantly.
- (medicine) A comatose patient's action of forming words with their lips without producing sound.
Related terms edit
References edit
- ^ “† mussitation, n.”, in OED Online
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2019.
- ^ “mussitation, n.”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, reproduced from Stuart Berg Flexner, editor in chief, Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1993, →ISBN.
Further reading edit
- “mussitation”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
French edit
Pronunciation edit
Audio (file)
Noun edit
mussitation f (plural mussitations)
Further reading edit
- “mussitation”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.