lisp
1.
n. incorrect production of sibilant sounds caused by faulty tongue placement or abnormalities of the articulatory mechanism. Speech and language pathologists have described various types of lisps, including four primary forms: the interdental (or frontal) lisp, in which the tongue protrudes between the front teeth and airflow is directed forward and only partially obstructed; the dental lisp, in which the airflow is partially impeded by contact with the tongue as it rests on or pushes against the front teeth or alveolar ridge; the lateral lisp, in which airflow and saliva are pushed forward over the sides of the broadly extended tongue, creating a wet sound; and the palatal lisp, in which the airflow is partially disrupted by the middle area of the tongue touching the rear portion of the soft palate. See also sigmatism. 2.
vb. to speak using a lisp. —lisping
n.
LISP
n. LIS(t) P(rocessing): the second oldest high-level computer programming language still in use. It was the primary language for writing artificial intelligence programs from the 1960s through the 1980s. The list is the primary data structure, and the basic unit of the language, the s-expression (symbolic expression), is defined recursively (i.e., if X is an s-expression, then so is the list of X). [created by U.S. computer scientist John McCarthy (1927–2011)]