shrill
Part of speech: adj
verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Late Middle English schrille, shirle, shrille (“of a sound: high-pitched, piercing; producing such a sound”), possibly from the earlier shil, schille (“loud, resounding; high-pitched”), from Old English sċill (“sonorous sounding”), of Germanic origin and probably ultimately imitative.
The r in the word was introduced by analogy to Middle English skrīke, skrīken, scrēmen, possibly to avoid confusion with non-Anglian forms of schelle (modern English shell) where Old English sċill (“sonorous sounding”) and sċill (“shell”) existed.
The word is cognate with Icelandic skella (“crash, bang, slam”), Low German schrell (“sharp in taste or tone”).
Inflected forms:
form: shriller
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: shrillest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: shrills
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: shrilling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: shrilled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: shrilled
pos: verb
tags: past
form: shrills
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: High-pitched and piercing.
pos: adj
examples: The woods rang with shrill cries of the birds.
Suppoſe, that you haue ſeene / The well-appointed King at Douer Peer, / Embarke his Royaltie: and his braue Fleet, / With ſilken Streamers, the young Phebus fayning; / […] Heare the ſhrill Whiſtle, which doth order giue / To ſounds confus'd.
Let winds be shrill, let waves roll high, / I fear not wave nor wind; / Yet marvel not, Sir Childe, that I / Am sorrowful in mind; […]
But I discovered no trace of him, and was beginning to conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the execution of his menaces; when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream.
gloss: Having a shrill voice.
pos: adj
examples: "It is Miss Halliday!" cried the house-maid, as she opened the door. "And oh my," she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, "how bad she do look!" […] "Oh, don't she look white!" cried a shrill girl with a baby in her arms.
gloss: Sharp or keen to the senses.
pos: adj
examples: Rather than shrill, feisty whites tasting of grass, green beans, gooseberry or pipi de chat (the somehow more polite French term for cat's pee), [Didier] Dagueneau's Sauvignons were statuesque, beautifully balanced wines with flavors reminiscent of citrus zests, apricot, fig, passion fruit and minerals.
gloss: Especially of a woman: fierce, loud, strident.
pos: adj
tags: derogatory
figuratively
examples: The clerk had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife, shrill, vehement, and fluent.
gloss: To make a shrill noise.
pos: verb
examples: And all wee dwell in deadly night, / O heauie herſe. / Breake we our pipes, that ſhrild as lowde as Larke, / O carefull verſe.
Harke how Troy roares, how Hecuba cries out, / How poore Andromache ſhrils her dolours foorth, / Behold deſtruction, frenzie, and amazement, / Like witleſſe antiques one another meete, / And all crie Hector, Hectors dead, O Hector.
Not ballad-ſinger plac'd above the croud, / Sings with a note ſo ſhrilling ſweet and loud, / Nor pariſh clerk who calls the pſalm ſo clear, / Like Bowzybeus ſooths th' attentive ear.
The labourers of the day were all retired to reſt; the lights were out in every cottage; no ſounds were heard but of the ſhrilling cock, and the deep-mouthed watch-dog, at hollow diſtance.
They, as a cloud of ſtarlings or of daws / Fly ſcreaming ſhrill, warn'd timely of the kite / Or hawk, devourers of the ſmaller kinds, / So they ſhrill—clamouring toward the fleet, / Haſted before Æneas and the might / Of Hector, nor the battle heeded more.
[F]rom them rose / A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, / And, as it were one voice, an agony / Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills / All night in a waste land, where no one comes, / Or hath come, since the making of the world.
[H]e paused, while his hands clutched, and his voice shrilled with passion— […]
As the guard's whistle shrilled the "right away," I made to join my companions in the train, but with a smile the driver, whose name was Abdul, bade me take the fireman's seat.
'Cause the owls only call out when something happens the rest of us can't understand. When they shrill, it's something terrible, […]
As she stumbles over scattered clothes, randomly kicked-off shoes, newspapers, and video games, she finally reaches the telephone, as it shrills out its cries to be picked up.
Jesse Lingard, another substitute, was only eight yards out when Harry Maguire’s knock-down fell for him but it was a wild finish and [Gareth] Southgate still had his head in his hands when the final whistle shrilled.
gloss: A shrill sound.
pos: noun
examples: [W]hen at laſt / I heard a voyce, which loudly to me called, / That with ſuddein ſhrill I was appalled.
The shrill of the whistle from the locomotive “Charlestown” announced the arrival of the first train into Fitchburg on 5 March 1845— […]
Sonographic example of two consecutive loud shrills of a common marmoset, showing sound frequencies of harmonics reaching into the ultrasonic range.
Derived words: Shrillary
shrillish
shrillness
shrilly
unshrill
Translations: