[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. ? To arrange in syllables. rare–1.
c. 1475. Partenay, 6581. Als the frensh staffes silabled be More breueloker and shorter also Then is the english lines vnto see.
2. To utter or express in (or as in) syllables or articulate speech; to pronounce syllable by syllable; to utter articulately or distinctly; to articulate. Also fig.
1633. P. Fletcher, Poet. Misc., tr. Asclepiads, 3. Unwritten Word, which never eye could see, Yet syllabled in flesh-spell’d character.
1634. Milton, Comus, 208. Airy tongues, that syllable mens names On Sands, and Shoars, and desert Wildernesses.
1751. Ld. Stormont, On Death Frederic Pr. Wales, 6, in Epicedia Oxon., C 2. To syllable new sounds in accent strange.
1820. Byron, Mar. Fal., III. i. 58. I cannot shape my tongue To syllable black deeds into smooth names.
1852. Whittier, First-Day Thoughts, 7. There syllabled by silence, let me hear The still small voice which reached the prophet’s ear.
1886. Miss Braddon, One Thing Needful, v. The first prayer those lips had ever syllabled.
b. To read (something) syllable by syllable; to read in detail or with close attention; to spell out. rare.
1728. P. Walker, Peden, in Biog. Presbyt. (1827), I. p. xxxi. This bruitish, carnal Age knows not what it is to syllable the Scriptures, or feed upon them.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., II. ii. These things were the Alphabet, whereby in after-time he was to syllable and partly read the grand Volume of the World.
c. To represent by syllables. rare.
1887. Newton, in Encycl. Brit., XXII. 200/2. Loud notes [of a snipe] that have been syllabled tinker, tinker, tinker.
3. intr. To utter syllables, to speak. nonce-use.
1829. Keats, Lamia, I. 244. Turn’d—syllabling thus, ‘Ah, Lycius bright.’
Hence Syllabled ppl. a.; Syllabling vbl. sb.
1819. Metropolis, I. 215. The three words drawn to the utmost extent of syllabling.
1843. Carlyle, Past & Pr., II. xvii. Men had not a hammer to begin with, not a syllabled articulation.
1865. Mrs. Whitney, Gayworthys, xxvii. (1879), 269. The tree-whispers sounded like a syllabled sympathy.
1876. Ruskin, Fors Clav., lxxi. § 2. 360. The painted syllabling of it.
1885. J. H. Dell, Dawning Grey. Songs Surges, 98. The songs of the surges I shaped to a syllabled sound.
