What's the difference between cry and shriek?

Cry


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To make a loud call or cry; to call or exclaim vehemently or earnestly; to shout; to vociferate; to proclaim; to pray; to implore.
  • (v. i.) To utter lamentations; to lament audibly; to express pain, grief, or distress, by weeping and sobbing; to shed tears; to bawl, as a child.
  • (v. i.) To utter inarticulate sounds, as animals.
  • (v. t.) To utter loudly; to call out; to shout; to sound abroad; to declare publicly.
  • (v. t.) To cause to do something, or bring to some state, by crying or weeping; as, to cry one's self to sleep.
  • (v. t.) To make oral and public proclamation of; to declare publicly; to notify or advertise by outcry, especially things lost or found, goods to be sold, ets.; as, to cry goods, etc.
  • (v. t.) to publish the banns of, as for marriage.
  • (v. i.) A loud utterance; especially, the inarticulate sound produced by one of the lower animals; as, the cry of hounds; the cry of wolves.
  • (v. i.) Outcry; clamor; tumult; popular demand.
  • (v. i.) Any expression of grief, distress, etc., accompanied with tears or sobs; a loud sound, uttered in lamentation.
  • (v. i.) Loud expression of triumph or wonder or of popular acclamation or favor.
  • (v. i.) Importunate supplication.
  • (v. i.) Public advertisement by outcry; proclamation, as by hawkers of their wares.
  • (v. i.) Common report; fame.
  • (v. i.) A word or phrase caught up by a party or faction and repeated for effect; as, the party cry of the Tories.
  • (v. i.) A pack of hounds.
  • (v. i.) A pack or company of persons; -- in contempt.
  • (v. i.) The crackling noise made by block tin when it is bent back and forth.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But not only did it post a larger loss than expected, Amazon also projected 7% to 18% revenue growth over the busiest shopping period of the year, a far cry from the 20%-plus pace that had convinced investors to overlook its persistent lack of profit in the past.
  • (2) Are you ready to vote?” is the battle cry, and even the most superficial of glances at the statistics tells why.
  • (3) A series of hierarchical multiple regressions revealed the effects of Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Intellect on evoking upset in spouses through condescension (e.g., treating spouse as stupid or inferior), possessiveness (demanding too much time and attention), abuse (slapping spouse), unfaithfulness (having sex with others), inconsiderateness (leaving toilet seat up), moodiness (crying a lot), alcohol abuse (drinking too much alcohol), emotional constriction (hiding emotions to act tough), and self-centeredness (acting selfishly).
  • (4) When we gave her a gift of a few books in English, she burst out crying.
  • (5) Postoperatively, an independent observer assessed conscious level, crying, posture and facial expression using a simple numerical scoring system, and also recorded heart and respiratory rates over a 2-h period.
  • (6) Antibodies with the CRI can be isolated by isoelectric focusing from selected mice that have produced a high concentration of the CRI.
  • (7) My mother told me not to cry.” He has since witnessed the transformation of Hagere Selam.
  • (8) Three infants reached pulse pressure values less than 1% of control when cries were sustained for nine cardiac cycles.
  • (9) One is to shoot them in the head and cry about the bloody aftermath.
  • (10) When the CTL nonresponder adult mice received CRI producer B lymphocytes, the nonresponder phenotype was not changed into the responder phenotype.
  • (11) At one point, shortly after Suárez had given them a 3-0 lead, a loud cry had gone up from the Liverpool end of "We're going to win the league".
  • (12) He made me laugh and cry, and his courage in writing about what he was going through was sometimes quite overwhelming.
  • (13) Insecure infant attachment at 16 months was associated with maternal perception of overcontrol, depressed mood state, and aversive conditioning to the impending cry in the laboratory task at the 5-month period.
  • (14) A week after the New York Film Critics Circle gave the movie its top award, a liberal political commentator wrote: "I'm betting that Dick Cheney will love [the film, which is] a far, far cry from the rousing piece of pro-Obama propaganda that some conservatives feared it would be."
  • (15) He'd thought: I can't ring, 'cos Harry's probably crying, and I can't quite deal with him crying on the phone."
  • (16) Studies of the stability of P1 plasmid in a P1 cry Escherichia coli lysogen have suggested a model for equipartition of plasmid copies.
  • (17) Kester said her daughter came and cried in her lap.
  • (18) With the Tories enjoying a persistent lead in the polls, the prime minister launched Labour's "Blair-plus" manifesto with a rallying cry to the party.
  • (19) Photograph: Peter Beaumont for the Guardian For his part the leader of Hadash, the veteran socialist party in Israel that emphasises Arab-Jewish cooperation, Odeh has now attracted a political star status most obvious on the stump in Lod on Wednesday in the repeated cries of “Ayman!” by shopkeepers and passersby keen to shake his hand or be photographed with him.
  • (20) Once I’d checked she was OK I said, ‘Stop crying now.’ ” So it’s about managing emotions: ‘I’m going to need you to get a grip.’” “If you’ve got interesting points to make about the devaluing of serious words like bullying and depression, why make them in a way that sounds like you’re ridiculing people who are suffering?” I ask.

Shriek


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To utter a loud, sharp, shrill sound or cry, as do some birds and beasts; to scream, as in a sudden fright, in horror or anguish.
  • (v. t.) To utter sharply and shrilly; to utter in or with a shriek or shrieks.
  • (n.) A sharp, shrill outcry or scream; a shrill wild cry such as is caused by sudden or extreme terror, pain, or the like.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But the bedeviled foray also works as a potent allegory on the slow, vice-like workings of conscience, as guilt hunts down the protagonists with the shrieking remorselessness of Greek furies.
  • (2) At the place where adorable meets obnoxious and the purr becomes a shriek, Leslie Mann is waiting to unload a howitzer of funny in your face.
  • (3) There is no doubt she is still traumatised, and her voice rises to a shriek as she describes it.
  • (4) Dozens of cleaners gathered outside the ministry as the officials drove up, shrieking in high-pitched voices that could be heard several city blocks away, to protest forced public-sector sackings the inspectors are demanding.
  • (5) The works of this period include Revelation and Fall (1966), in which a nun in blood-red costume and a megaphone shrieks expressionist poems of Georg Trakl, the Missa super l’Homme Armé (1968), a parody of a Latin Mass, and above all Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969).
  • (6) I gaze, bemused and, yes, fascinated, at curious anthropological artefacts such as Bride Wars or He's Just Not That Into You or Confessions of a Shopaholic, in which Kate Hudson or Ginnifer Goodwin or Isla Fisher play characters who might almost belong to a third gender, a bubble-headed one that emits ear-splitting shrieks, teeters constantly on the verge of hysteria and acts as an indiscriminate mouthpiece for the placement of overpriced tat.
  • (7) One group of women shrieked “Hillary!” as she bent down to greet them.
  • (8) Leaving a Murdoch-dominated media landscape with shows where, each week, shrieking irradiated cannibals sing power ballads as they compete for the right to die?
  • (9) What everyone can hear, loud as a burglar alarm, is the shriek of self-interest dressed up as national interest.
  • (10) Coyle is a parliamentary newbie elected only in May, so we might cordially warn him and all those Labour and Conservative MPs who have shrieked about “bullying” that they spent this week in presentational danger of reducing a bombing campaign to what Alfred Hitchcock called a MacGuffin – “a plot device that motivates the characters and advances the story”, but which is often unimportant in itself.
  • (11) They believe they have a good idea about who the core readership is, and one of the ways they prise a reaction from that readership is through shrieked alerts and cautionary tales about The Other.
  • (12) Instead listeners heard a piercing shriek as Pargetter slid off the roof of his stately home, after defying his wife's orders and yielding to the suggestion of his brother-in-law, David, that it would be a good time to take down the banner, in icy darkness in the middle of a family party.
  • (13) Fellows of the Royal Society aren't supposed to shriek.
  • (14) Hope, change ... and TV in a hundred years Photograph: AMC Todd: You remember last year when pale, hollow-eyed individuals wandered out onto the streets of our great nation, grabbing anyone they could see by the lapels and shrieking, "HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS SHOW BREAKING BAD?
  • (15) Vote Green and you’ll get Tories!” they shriek at me.
  • (16) Had this announcement been made about the Queen, headlines would have shrieked, “Abdication!” Aides have stressed that she will carry on.
  • (17) I used to worry that computers were to blame: that modern connectivity was steadily turning all of us into a bunch of fake, shrieking character actors.
  • (18) The risks are in being ignored entirely or forcing an interjection and appearing “shrill” – the death shriek for women trying to get ahead anywhere.
  • (19) Particularly arresting were the new uses Bush was making of her voice: tracks such as Pull Out the Pin and Suspended in Gaffa teemed with a panoply of exaggerated accents and jarring phrasings, as Bush applied thespian emphasis on particular words or syllables, and developed a whole new vocabulary of harsh shrieks and throat-scorched yelps.
  • (20) Every open space, including in the CBD, sees rockets and flares shriek through the dark without warning and silhouettes run from recently lit fizzing cylinders.