[strahyd-nt] 
| 1. | making or having a harsh sound; grating; creaking: strident insects; strident hinges. |
| 2. | having a shrill, irritating quality or character: a strident tone in his writings. |
| 3. | Linguistics. (in distinctive feature analysis) characterized acoustically by noise of relatively high intensity, as sibilants, labiodental and uvular fricatives, and most affricates. |
| stri·dent (strīd'nt) adj. Loud, harsh, grating, or shrill; discordant. See Synonyms at loud, vociferous. [Latin strīdēns, strīdent-, present participle of strīdēre, to make harsh sounds, ultimately of imitative origin.] stri'dence, stri'den·cy n., stri'dent·ly adv. |
nt