Word.ws English Dictionary

devil screecher

devil screecher noun: a swift.

Noun

devil screecher (plural devil screechers)

  1. (UK, archaic) A swift.
    • My informant seemed to look upon the swift as an uncanny bird, and called it by a name I had never heard before, devil-screecher.1883, Edgar MacCulloch, “Notes, Queries, Notices and News”, in The Folk-Lore Journal, volume 1, number 12, page 394

Forms of devil screecher

pluraldevil screechers

Origin of devil screecher

From the bird's piercing cry.

Questions about devil screecher

What does devil screecher mean?
Devil screecher means a swift.
What part of speech is devil screecher?
Devil screecher is a noun.
What is the plural of devil screecher?
The plural of devil screecher is devil screechers.

Words near devil screecher in the dictionary

  1. devil is kissing his wife
  2. devil lies in the details
  3. devil negation
  4. devil ray
  5. devil rays
  6. devil screecher
  7. devil screechers
  8. devil seam
  9. devil seams
  10. devil sign
  11. devil signs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: devil screecher (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “devil screecher.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/devil_screecher. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.