Meaning of whistness | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Silence.
   obsolete, uncountable
2. Witchcraft; supernatural dealings.
   Devon, obsolete, uncountable

Examples

“Who dares cumber / This universall whistnesse; where none come⟳, / But taciturnity, and silence dumbe?”

“[O]thers fancied — the natives notably — that there was some "whistness," or witchcraft, in the business; it might be, as they thought, the work⟳ of Dick Down, the old huntsman who was eaten by the Hayne hounds, and whose ghost was known to haunt the covers round the park⟳.”

“Other more learned derivations have⟳ been suggested, but the whole place⟳ is steeped in “whistness” for on the open⟳ hillside above the oak copse runs the ancient Lych way, that ghostly Path of the Dead […]”

CEFR level