(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.
Shrill
Definition:
(v. i.) Acute; sharp; piercing; having or emitting a sharp, piercing tone or sound; -- said of a sound, or of that which produces a sound.
(n.) A shrill sound.
(v. i.) To utter an acute, piercing sound; to sound with a sharp, shrill tone; to become shrill.
(v. t.) To utter or express in a shrill tone; to cause to make a shrill sound.
Example Sentences:
(1) There’ll never be another like him,” she shrilled when she recovered.
(2) He should conduct this conversation factually, carefully, without loud or shrill tones.
(3) Sorry, I mean it would be the department of trade.” She gives a shrill, uneasy laugh.
(4) They also spend excessive time in making unusual sounds consisting of a high-pitched shrill cry with little intonation in infancy and a harsh, strained, and glottal stridency in later life.
(5) Morrison has described claims that Australia was violating international law as offensive and labelled criticism of his silence over the fate of the two boats "shrill and hysterical".
(6) 2.13pm GMT He calls the idea that we have lost track of terrorist plotters as a result of these disclosures "shrill and unsubstantiated".
(7) A grandmother of five, Jones sports a discrete shrill carder bumblebee tattoo on her shoulder courtesy of taking part in a green art project.
(8) Dave meanwhile lapsed into his shrill Bullingdon Club persona; the dividing line between self confidence and smugness is gossamer thin for the prime minister.
(9) Let it be said clearly that the press – divided, suspicious, too often shrill – is no easy partner in this search.
(10) In the context of the increasingly shrill debate around migration and Europe, this week's the Mail on Sunday included an article attacking the non-profit organisation European Alternatives , of which I am co-president.
(11) "Navalny carefully distanced himself from the shrill, old-guard western-friendly liberals – 'hellish, insane, crazy mass of the leftovers and bread crusts of the democracy movement of the 80s', he called them – who simply participated in Putin's cult of personality in reverse."
(12) Winners and losers Going: Species facing "severe" threats in England Red squirrel Northern bluefin tuna Natterjack toad Common skate Alpine foxtail Kittiwake Grey plover Shrill carder bumblebee Recovering: Recent conservation success stories Pole cat Large blue butterfly Red kite Ladybird spider Pink meadowcap Sand lizard Pool frog Bittern
(13) Even at school throughout the school day you would be teaching and next door in the secure accommodation unit you could hear someone, this shrill scream, as they just cry out because they’ve lost it, absolutely lost it, or self-harmed,” Reen said.
(14) The shrill blast of a whistle still makes Almaz Russom wince.
(15) His later years, as the preachments of abolitionists and slaveholders reached their shrill adumbration of bloody war, were marked, even made notorious, by his fiery championing of John Brown, whom he had briefly met in Concord, finding him "a man of great common sense, deliberate and practical", endowed with "tact and prudence" and the Spartan habits and spare diet of a soldier.
(16) The risks are in being ignored entirely or forcing an interjection and appearing “shrill” – the death shriek for women trying to get ahead anywhere.
(17) The shameful destruction of New Orleans, the Wall Street crash of 2008 and growing indebtedness to China, the collapse of so many industries and the shrill ideological divisions in Congress over monetary and fiscal policy can all be traced to habits ingrained in the Reagan years when the notion took hold that "the government is not the solution to our problems; the government is the problem".
(18) He says it's hyperventilation from a shrill government.
(19) It can be a bit shrill One long-serving maker of risky BBC television programmes argues that behind the compliance craze is a bigger loss of nerve.
(20) The shepherd lad held on steadily, driving his goats with shrill cries up our hill for the better pasture on the western side.