Other forms: hissing, hisses, hissed
To hiss is to make a long sharp sss sound. A cat backed into a corner does it, with its ears flat; so does a snake; so does the gas ring in the second before it lights.
Anything letting air or steam out hisses: a punctured tyre, a radiator, a kettle, an untuned radio. People hiss in two ways. An audience used to hiss a bad performance, and the word still means showing dislike that way. You can also hiss a sentence — say it in a furious whisper without raising your voice: sit down, she hissed. The noun is a hiss, and the soft background noise on an old cassette is called tape hiss.
1verbhissTo make a long sharp s-sound, the way a snake or an angry cat does.
“The cat hissed at the dog and shot under the sofa.”
2verbsteamOf steam, gas or air: to escape with that sound.
“The radiator hissed all night in the corner of the room.”
3verbwhisperTo say something in a sharp angry whisper.
“Keep your voice down, he hissed.”
4verbshowTo show dislike of a performance or a speaker by making this sound.
“The crowd hissed when the villain came on.”
5nounlongA long sharp s-sound.
“There was a hiss from the pipe and then nothing.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Hiss came into Middle English as hissen and is almost certainly imitative — the word is the sound it names, which is why it needs no explaining in any language. Middle Dutch had hissen too, and even Arabic has a word built the same way.
Middle English
hissen
English, today
hiss
From Middle English hissen, probably of onomatopoeic origin (compare Arabic هَسْهَسَ). Compare Middle Dutch hissen, hisschen (“to chase away, shoo”), Middle Low German hissen (“to chase, hound, incite”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA