(1904-) US diplomat and liberal Democrat, a former State Department official, imprisoned 1950 for perjury when he denied having been a Soviet spy. There are doubts about the justice of Hiss's conviction.
Hiss, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and one of President Roosevelt's advisers at the 1945 Yalta Conference, was accused 1948 by a former Soviet agent, Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961), of having passed information to the USSR during the period 1926–37. He was convicted of perjury for swearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had not spied for the USSR (under the statute of limitations he could not be tried for the original crime). Richard Nixon was a prominent member of the committee, which inspired the subsequent anticommunist witch-hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The official Soviet commission on KGB archives reported in 1992 that Hiss had never been a spy.

A fricative sound uttered as an expression of dislike or contempt; SYN. hissing.

1. To express or utter with a hiss; SYN. sizz, siss, sibilate.
2. To make a sharp hissing sound, as if to show disapproval; SYN. siss, sizz, sibilate.
3. To move with a whooshing sound; SYN. whoosh.