Note 280 — Chapter V · EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.
Reading edition
Similar sounds are used to command silence, to stop speaking as well as to stop going. English husht! whist! hist! Welsh ust! French chut! Italian zitto! Swedish tyst! Russian st’! and the Latin st! so well described in the curious old line quoted by Mr. Farrar, which compares it with the gesture of the finger on the lips:—
‘Isis, et Harpocrates digito qui significat st!’
This group of interjections, again, has not been proved to be in use outside Aryan limits.