(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.