semiquaver BrE
sixteenth note AmE

With a demiquaver.

Baby Jane, who sings and talks about depression and violence in a throbbing voice that can move from vulnerability to bawdiness in a demiquaver, likes to say that "my body has no exits and my speech no punctuation."

At low tension this world may be pleasantly conceited, as when a Venetian gondola is called "a bent demiquaver, a notation of the music of the water"; but ordinarily the world's assault on the child's vision has a fearfulness that reminds one of half-mad moments in Virginia Woolf's fiction.