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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

screech.

A high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.

7 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/skɹiːt͡ʃ/[skɹiːt͡ʃ]UK[skɹit͡ʃ]US
  1. A high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.

    countable
  2. A harsh, shrill cry, as of one in acute pain or in fright; a shriek; a scream.

    countable
  3. Newfoundland rum.

    Newfoundland · uncountable
  4. A form of home-made rye whiskey made from used oak rye barrels from a distillery.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

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.

verb/skɹiːt͡ʃ/[skɹiːt͡ʃ]UK[skɹit͡ʃ]US
  1. To make such a sound.

  2. To travel very fast, as if making the sound of a car that is driving too fast.

    figuratively · intransitive
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.