Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. High-pitched and piercing in tone or sound: the shrill wail of a siren.
- adj. Producing a sharp, high-pitched tone or sound: a shrill fife.
- adj. Sharp or keen to the senses; harshly vivid: shrill colors.
- v. To utter in a shrill manner; scream.
- v. To produce a shrill cry or sound.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To utter or emit a keen, piercing, high-pitched sound.
- To sound shrilly; be shrill.
- To cause to give out a shrill sound.
- To utter or produce with a shrill sound.
- Sharp and piercing in sound; high and keen (somewhat disagreeably so) in voice or note: the common use of the word.
- Emitting or capable of emitting a sharp, high, piercing sound.
- Piercing; sharp; affecting the senses sharply or keenly; bright.
- n. A keen or piercing sound.
- In a shrill manner; shrilly.
Wiktionary
- adj. High-pitched and piercing.
- adj. Sharp or keen to the senses.
- v. To make a shrill noise.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Acute; sharp; piercing; having or emitting a sharp, piercing tone or sound; -- said of a sound, or of that which produces a sound.
- n. obsolete A shrill sound.
- v. To utter an acute, piercing sound; to sound with a sharp, shrill tone; to become shrill.
- v. To utter or express in a shrill tone; to cause to make a shrill sound.
WordNet 3.0
- v. utter a shrill cry
- adj. of colors that are bright and gaudy
- adj. being sharply insistent on being heard
- adj. having or emitting a high-pitched and sharp tone or tones
Etymologies
- Middle English shrille. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English shrille. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“PAGE 134.l. 13. _ivory shrill_, the shrill sound of the ivory horn. ll.”
“Harry Reid doesn't know what the term shrill means.”
“He sites what he calls the shrill voices of liberal-left journalists, or 'laptop bombadiers' that became the champions of forceful western intervention.”
Alan Miller: "Good Versus Evil": Radovan Karadzic and the West
“On the instant they recognized the head, and on the instant rose their wild hearty laughter as they explained to one another in shrill falsetto voices.”
“Once a voice of restraint and reason, Sullivan now specializes in shrill panic: mercurial ranting full nof operatic arguments, steeped in bad faith, aimed at people he once praised (including yours truly).”
“And one "empirical" "measure" might be to track how much of a comeback the word shrill makes”
"Two years of Pelosi gives a good idea of what four years of Hillary will be like."
“And one "empirical" "measure" might be to track how much of a comeback the word shrill makes, in what contexts (and not) and with regard to whom (and not).”
"Two years of Pelosi gives a good idea of what four years of Hillary will be like."
“When I hear the word shrill, I think of some totally off the rails person half screaming about some nonsense.”
“Per contra, there was Frank Barlow, whom we used to call "Crazy Barlow" because of his headlong rush at whatever object he had in view, and he could make the call shrill and thrill like a fife.”
“The lieutenant spoke in short shrill periods, chopping off the ends of his words as if with a hatchet.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘shrill’.
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Talk Talk
Words for Talking
( open list, randomness )squawk, gab, chatter, chitchat, blab, prattle, blather, discuss, hector, plead, cajole, harangue and 200 more...
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Sounds
words that describe sound
atchoo, atishoo, babble, bam, bay, beep, blast, blather, bleat, bleep, blip, bong and 242 more...
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Descriptions of Sound
jingling, gurgling, horrisonous, horrisonant, crepitant, screeching, ringing, sonorous, clamorous, rattling, roaring, breathy and 71 more...
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Not with a bang...
Whimpering, wailing words...
wheeple, whimper, whinge, whine, mewl, pule, moan, sniffle, snivel, weep, lament, mourn and 16 more...
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Vocab ##5
appint, monarch, counterpart, muse, bestow, unwitting, aghast, admonish, wage, decree, cavalry, phalanx and 126 more...
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slumry's Words
cattywampus, ingratiate, lackadaisical, exactitude, exfoliate, fulminate, circumnavigation, circuitous, debride, sidle, sequester, chicory and 1002 more...
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Miss Sunshine
she's such a joy.
bereaved, bitter, cheerless, dejected, depressed, despairing, despondent, disconsolate, dismal, distressed, doleful, downcast and 405 more...
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dark and bright words of shine and fi...
scotophil, scotoma, scotia, shed, shadow, shade, scone, whiting, edelweiss, light, lightning, lucina and 349 more...
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newGRE
mostly from magoosh
imbue, verge on, nonchalant, deliberate, timorous, futile, provisional, dissect, checked, tinged, alluring, visionary and 1046 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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Resounding Words
great timbre
sone, sonata, resound, sonorous, consonant, unison, sonic, swan, sonant, sonnet, dissonance, scraunch and 142 more...
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GRE vocab
martinet, churlish, polyglot, aplomb, dissembler, histrionics, prevarication, ignominy, impugn, fastidious, trenchant, perfunctory and 155 more...
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Wordwild's Delights
Delightful words to read and use
plangent, ribald, titubant, sidereal, pelagic, improvident, dolorous, parlous, baleful, precatory, pied, mephitic and 247 more...
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Infinite Jest
Words to remember from DFW's "Infinite Jest"
wen, matriculation, circumflex, lapidary, effete, sotto, hypertrophy, presbyopic, ideogram, pinion, parquet, nelson and 152 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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Delicious Words
The stuff that fit its descript. so well you can almost taste it on your tongue or feel the sting against your skin.
gurgle, grubby, tangy, bolt, spring, skid, shudder, thud, thump, spit, lush, pop and 91 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for shrill.

bilby
They are all gone away,
The house is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
- Edwin Arlington Robinson, 'The House On The Hill'. Nov 16, 2008