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screech

[skreech]

Example Sentences Origin

verb (used without object)

to utter or make a harsh, shrill cry or sound: The child screeched hysterically. The brakes screeched.

verb (used with object)

to utter with a screech: She screeched her warning.

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Screech is one of our favorite verbs.

So is absquatulate. Does it mean:

to expurgate (a written work) by removing or modifying passages considered vulgar or objectionable.

to flee; abscond:

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noun

a harsh, shrill cry or sound: an owl's screech; the screech of brakes.

Origin:
1550–60; variant of obsolete scritch to scream; akin to screak

Related forms

screech·er, noun

Synonyms
1. See scream.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To screech

Example Sentences

The screech was the kind that curls the teeth and curdles the blood.

Some editors would screech and yelp when they got excited about a manuscript.

Another will screech when a vehicle approaches too fast from the side.

EXPAND

The screech was the kind that curls the teeth and curdles the blood.

Some editors would screech and yelp when they got excited about a manuscript.

Another will screech when a vehicle approaches too fast from the side.

The ploy worked to draw out four eastern screech owls and nine barred owls.

There's a horrible, fingernails-on-chalkboard screech every time the vehicle comes to a stop.

It is to the office what the blue jay's screech is to the garden.

One team of overnight owlers found luck last night with two species, the eastern screech owl and the barred owl.

Theynever screech about the censorship of texts that matter.

Toucans screech from low branches, and monkeys leap from tree to tree.

To ban a book- even a violent how-to makes my mind screech in response.

But there was no burned-rubber screech of tires on asphalt.

Maybe it was the sudden screech of the bus's brakes or the orange flash of its hazard lights.

Anything further from the saguaro screech owl, which makes a loud clap with its mandibles, would be hard to imagine.

The bulk of the traffic sound today comes from the screech and whine of rubber on tarmac or concrete.

Trains whistle, wheeze and screech around corners and past venous intersections.

There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.

Bowie has stopped chasing the latest dance beats and returned to the thrust and screech of a band driven by guitars.

If you looked as stunning as that, you'd have the right to screech around as much as you wanted to as well.

They are constantly twitching about, and giving out half-screeches or chips before they erupt into a full screech.

Sometimes cars screech to a halt to avoid hitting them in the darkness, several neighbors said.

Fiddles screech inside and the customers are wall-to-wall.

His body language is introverted, his sound is soft and engulfing and he will never honk or screech without a good reason.

He stiffened as an unusually loud screech echoed throughout the hull.

Lambert, who tops his singing with a soulful screech somewhere between the blues and a smoke.

What results is a screech with little actual pitch or verbal content.

They screech at one another in excitement and anger and grief.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

screech¹ (skriːtʃ)

—n
1.	a shrill, harsh, or high-pitched sound or cry

—vb
2.	to utter with or produce a screech

[C16: variant of earlier scritch, of imitative origin]

'screecher¹

—n

screech² (skriːtʃ)

—n
	(esp in Newfoundland) a dark rum

[perhaps special use of screech¹]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

screech

mid-13c., schrichen, possibly of imitative origin (cf. shriek). The noun is first recorded 1550s. Screech owl is attested from 1590s (scritch-owl is from 1520s).

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Related Words

scream screak blare blast caterwaul

caterwaul screech owl shivering owl shriek

Matching Quote

"We sometimes observe that spoiled children contract a habit of annoying quite wantonly those who have charge of them, and seem to measure their own sense of well-being, not by what they do, but by the degree of reaction they can cause. It is vain to get rid of them by not minding them: if purring and humming is not noticed, they squeal and screech; then if you chide and console them, they find the experiment succeeds, and they begin again. The child will sit in your arms contented if you do nothing. If you take a book and read, he commences hostile operations."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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