shriek.
A sharp, shrill outcry or scream; a shrill wild cry caused by sudden or extreme terror, pain, or the like.
Meaning & usage
A sharp, shrill outcry or scream; a shrill wild cry caused by sudden or extreme terror, pain, or the like.
An exclamation mark.
Where this word comes from
From obsolete shrick (1567), shreke, variants of earlier screak, skricke (before 1500), from Middle English scrycke, from a North Germanic/Scandinavian language (compare Swedish skrika, Danish skrige, Icelandic skríkja), from Proto-Germanic *skrīkijaną, *skrik- (compare English screech). More at screech.
To utter a loud, sharp, shrill sound or cry, as do some birds and beasts; to scream, as in a sudden fright, in horror or anguish.
To utter sharply and shrilly; to utter in or with a shriek or shrieks.
Where this word comes from
From obsolete shrick (1567), shreke, variants of earlier screak, skricke (before 1500), from Middle English scrycke, from a North Germanic/Scandinavian language (compare Swedish skrika, Danish skrige, Icelandic skríkja), from Proto-Germanic *skrīkijaną, *skrik- (compare English screech). More at screech.
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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.