screech
/skɹiːt͡ʃ/[skɹiːt͡ʃ]
screech noun: a high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.
Noun
screech (countable and uncountable, plural screeches)
- A high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.
- A harsh, shrill cry, as of one in acute pain or in fright; a shriek; a scream.
- “Before he was a twel’month ould he had a mouth full o’ great teeth; his hands wor like ’s claws, and his legs wor no thicker nor the handle of a whip, and about as straight as a rapin’ hook; to make the matther worse, he had the gut uv a cormorant, and the whinge, and the yelp, and the screech...1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 522
- Newfoundland rum.
- A form of home-made rye whiskey made from used oak rye barrels from a distillery.
Verb
screech (third-person singular simple present screeches, present participle screeching, simple past and past participle screeched)
- To make such a sound.
- That the night owl should screech before the noonday sun, that the bat should wheel around the bad of beauty […]1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter VI, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC
- "Have you not met them?" "No, I have met nothing but three cormorants, which were sitting on a bit of drift-wood screeching."1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 48
- To travel very fast, as if making the sound of a car that is driving too fast.
- You've got to admire their balls. Real Madrid screeched after them: an entire herd, powerful and co-ordinated, salivating and breathing hard, murder in their eyes. So Barcelona moved the ball on, away from them. Forced back, it was played into Víctor Valdés, the goalkeeper, who slotted it to Carles...2011 December 12, Sid Lowe, “Víctor Valdés epitomises Barcelona's bravery as Real Madrid falter”, in the Guardian
screech meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Bengali and Malayalam
screech in Tamil
- கீச்சொலி
screech in Marathi
- to screech, shriek
- किंचाळणे kiñcāḷṇe
screech in Bengali
- তীক্ষ্ণ চিৎকার করা
screech in Malayalam
- scream, shriek, yell
- കാറുക, അലറുക, പേടിച്ചലുക, അലറിക്കരയുക, നൊന്തുകരയുക, ദേഷ്യത്തിലലറുക
More languagesFewer languages
- screech in Kannada
- ಕಿರುಚು, ಕೀರಿಕುತ್ತು
- screech in Persian
- جیغ, صدای غیژغیژ, نوعی ویسکی خانگی
Examples of screech in a sentence
- They said he had caused the fire in some way; be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The...
- The tide was out, and we drew up amid the strong bracing smell of seaweed, with gulls screeching, wheeling around, and gliding on the wind.1947 January and February, O. S. Nock, “"The Aberdonian" in Wartime”, in Railway Magazine, page 8:
- AS THE residents of the quiet Midlothian housing estate prepared for the day ahead, the early-morning stillness was disturbed by the sound of screeching brakes and slamming doors.2004 April 15, “Morning swoop in hunt for Jodi's killer”, in The Scotsman:
- Real Madrid screeched after them: an entire herd, powerful and co-ordinated, salivating and breathing hard, murder in their eyes.2011 December 12, Sid Lowe, “Víctor Valdés epitomises Barcelona's bravery as Real Madrid falter”, in the Guardian:
Synonyms of screech
Forms of screech
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | screeches |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | screeches |
| present participle | screeching |
| past participle | screeched |
| past | screeched |
Origin of screech
1602; altered with expressive vowel lengthening from earlier skrech (1577), variant of obsolete scritch, from Middle English skriken, shrichen, schrichen (1250), from Old English (attested as scriccettan) and Old Norse skríkja, both from Proto-Germanic *skrīkijaną (compare Icelandic skríkja, Old Saxon scricōn, Danish skrige, Swedish skrika), derivative of *skrīhaną (compare Middle Dutch schriën, German schreien, Low German dial. schrien, schriegen), ultimately of imitative origin.
Words formed from screech
- screech bird
- screecher
- screech hawk
- screech-in
- screech martin
- screech owl
- screech thrush
- screech tunnel
- Cambondo screeching frog
- screech out
Phrases with screech
Words that rhyme with screech
Questions about screech
- What does screech mean?
- Screech means a high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.
- What is screech in Tamil?
- Screech in Tamil is கீச்சொலி. See Screech meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use screech in a sentence?
- They said he had caused the fire in some way; be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly.
- What part of speech is screech?
- Screech can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce screech?
- Screech is pronounced /skɹiːt͡ʃ/.
- What is the plural of screech?
- The plural of screech is screeches.
Words near screech in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: screech (page history and authors); screech (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); किंचाळणे (Marathi) (page history and authors); screech (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); screech (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); screech (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-screech.wav.
Cite this entry: “screech.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/screech. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.