| / English Dictionary |
WISP
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A small tuft or lock
Example:
wisps of hair
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("wisp" is a kind of...):
tuft; tussock (a bunch of hair or feathers or growing grass)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A flock of snipe
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("wisp" is a kind of...):
flock (a group of birds)
Meronyms (members of "wisp"):
snipe (Old or New World straight-billed game bird of the sandpiper family; of marshy areas; similar to the woodcocks)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A small bundle of straw or hay
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("wisp" is a kind of...):
bundle; package; packet; parcel (a collection of things wrapped or boxed together)
Sense 4
Meaning:
A small person
Example:
a mere wisp of a girl
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("wisp" is a kind of...):
small person (a person of below average size)
Derivation:
wispy (thin and weak)
Context examples:
Transcendentalism is a beacon to the angels, even if it be a will-o'-the-wisp to man.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, strange Oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider's web, round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round your neck—nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think, have found a place in that collection; and for number, I am sure they were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Came a beautiful fall day, warm and languid, palpitant with the hush of the changing season, a California Indian summer day, with hazy sun and wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir the slumber of the air.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
From the point the shore curved away, more and more to the south and west, until at last it disclosed a cove within the cove, a little land-locked harbour, the water level as a pond, broken only by tiny ripples where vagrant breaths and wisps of the storm hurtled down from over the frowning wall of rock that backed the beach a hundred feet inshore.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Then, too, she loved nature, and with generous imagination he changed the scene of their reading—sometimes they read in closed-in valleys with precipitous walls, or in high mountain meadows, and, again, down by the gray sand-dunes with a wreath of billows at their feet, or afar on some volcanic tropic isle where waterfalls descended and became mist, reaching the sea in vapor veils that swayed and shivered to every vagrant wisp of wind.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
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