Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A mumbling or muttering.
- noun In pathology, movement of the lips and tongue as in speaking, but without articulation: a sign of bad omen in disease.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete A speaking in a low tone; mumbling.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
speech conducted in a hushed manner, akin to a whisper or a murmur. - noun medicine A comatose patient's action of forming words with his lips without producing sound.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a low continuous indistinct sound; often accompanied by movement of the lips without the production of articulate speech
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Latin mussātĭo, ceasing to speak
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Examples
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315 Certain parts should be recited aloud (jahr) and others sotto voce (with mussitation = Khafi).
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Not conversation by any civilized standard, but a kind of a mussitation, the prisoner’s half-mime half-whisper, under the nodding eye of an orderly.
At Swim, Two Boys Jamie O’Neill 2002
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Not conversation by any civilized standard, but a kind of a mussitation, the prisoner’s half-mime half-whisper, under the nodding eye of an orderly.
At Swim, Two Boys Jamie O’Neill 2002
qms commented on the word mussitation
Near speechless, the suffering nation
Now mutters in utter frustration.
The goblin’s obscenist
New claim is his genius.
We‘re driven to dazed mussitation.
January 14, 2018