screamers

Noun

screamer (plural screamers)

1. One who screams; one who shouts; one who sings harshly.
   • 'Don't be frightened, mistress,' said Quilp, after a pause. 'Your son knows me; I don't eat babies; I don't like 'em. It will be as well to stop that young screamer though, in case I should be tempted to do him a mischief. Holloa, sir! Will you be quiet?'1840 April – 1841 November, Charles Dickens, “Chapter the Twenty-first”, in The Old Curiosity Shop. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1841, →OCLC
2. Any bird in the taxonomic family Anhimidae, endemic to South America, being large, bulky birds with a small downy head, long legs and large feet.
3. (US, obsolete) A healthy, vigorous animal.
   • I had seen the track of the bear they were after, and I knowed he was a screamer.1917, David Crockett, “The Bear Hunt”, in Maurice Garland Fulton, editor, Southern Life in Southern Literature
4. A healthy, vigorous person.
5. Something exceptionally good.
   • "[…]I do not judge hastily, Alec, for I have read a dozen, at least, of these stories, and, with much that is attractive to boys, I find a great deal to condemn in them, and other parents say the same when I ask them."
     "Now, Mum, that's too bad! I like 'em tip-top. This one is a regular screamer,"...1875, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter 17, in Eight Cousins
6. A difficult catch.
   • But then he came around the wicket again, I slashed at one, and Strauss, at full stretch diving to his left at second slip, took an absolute screamer. It was the catch of the summer, and it happened to me.2010, Adam Gilchrist, True Colours

See all 17 meanings of screamer