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

  • 315 Certain parts should be recited aloud (jahr) and others sotto voce (with mussitation = Khafi).

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • 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

  • 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

Comments

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  • 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