whistly
1
8.4
- adjective
- /ˈwɪs.tli/
- Sometimes, he forced a thin, whistly breath through his teeth.
Examples
-
Finally, a low, whistly scratch.
Fiction book (1998) -
Jan speaks through her whistly braces, gesturing with a too-full glass of red wine.
Fiction book (1996) -
These M2 and L4 values are consistent with the speaker producing whistly /s/ in rounded contexts (cf. Shadle & Scully, 1995).
Academic text (2013) -
From the whistly instant way the ball vanishes from the center of his held-down vision, he knows the hit is sweet; they all together watch the dark dot rise, hover that little ghostly extra bit that gives the distance, and then drop straight down on the green, a hair to the left but what looks pin high, the ball bouncing right with the slant of the bowl-shaped green.
Fiction book (1990) -
The bird makes a whistly sound as it flies through the trees.
-
She played a whistly tune on her flute that echoed in the quiet room.
-
As the wind blew through the cracks, it created a whistly noise that filled the house.
Synonyms
7
6.1
A high whistling or rough sound that you make when breathing is hard
2
6.5
Making a high, whistling sound when breathing because the throat or chest is partly blocked
How High-Pitched
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Whistly comes from the familiar word whistle, the high clear sound you make by blowing, plus the ending -ly that turns a word into an adjective. So whistly means 'like a whistle' or making a whistle-like sound.