Other forms: lisps
A lisp is a speech habit of sounding an s like a th. A slight lisp, speak with a lisp, lisping child.
It is common in young children and usually resolves on its own; it persists when the tongue rests too far forward, which speech therapy corrects. It has been used lazily in fiction to mark a character as weak or effete. Note that Lisp the programming language is named from list processing, and the joke about the name is old.
1nounlispA speech habit of sounding an s like a th.
“She had a lisp as a child and saw a speech therapist for years.”
lisp is a speech habit.
Old English wlispian comes from wlisp, lisping, which is imitative of the sound.
Old English
*wlispian
Middle English
lispen
English, today
lisp
Built from
From Middle English lispen, lipsen, wlispen, from Old English wlispian (attested in āwlyspian (“to lisp”)), from Old English wlisp, wlips (“stammering, lisping”), from Proto-Germanic wlispaz (“lisping”), from Proto-Indo-European wlis-, wleys- (“rod”), from wel- (“to turn, roll”). Cognate with Middle Low German wlispen (“to lisp”), Dutch lispen (“to lisp”), German lispeln (“to lisp”), Danish læspe (“to lisp”), Swedish läspa (“to lisp”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire