shrill

adj

1. High-pitched and piercing.

   “The woods rang with shrill cries of the birds.”

   “Suppoſe, that you haue ſeene / The well-appointed King at Douer Peer, / Embarke his Royaltie: and his braue Fleet, / With ſilken Streamers, the young Phebus fayning; / [...] Heare the ſhrill Whiſtle, which doth order giue / To ſounds confus'd.”

   “Let winds be shrill, let waves roll high, / I fear not wave nor wind; / Yet marvel not, Sir Childe, that I / Am sorrowful in mind; [...]”

   “But I discovered no trace of him, and was beginning to conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the execution of his menaces; when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream.”

2. Having a shrill voice.

   “"It is Miss Halliday!" cried the house-maid, as she opened the door. "And oh my," she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, "how bad she do look!" [...] "Oh, don't she look white!" cried a shrill girl with a baby in her arms.”

3. Sharp or keen to the senses.

   “Rather than shrill, feisty whites tasting of grass, green beans, gooseberry or pipi de chat (the somehow more polite French term for cat's pee), [Didier] Dagueneau's Sauvignons were statuesque, beautifully balanced wines with flavors reminiscent of citrus zests, apricot, fig, passion fruit and minerals.”

4. (derogatory, especially, figuratively)Fierce, loud, strident.

   “The clerk had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife, shrill, vehement, and fluent.”

verb

1. To make a shrill noise.

   “And all wee dwell in deadly night, / O heauie herſe. / Breake we our pipes, that ſhrild as lowde as Larke, / O carefull verſe.”

   “Harke how Troy roares, how Hecuba cries out, / How poore Andromache ſhrils her dolours foorth, / Behold deſtruction, frenzie, and amazement, / Like witleſſe antiques one another meete, / And all crie Hector, Hectors dead, O Hector.”

   “Not ballad-ſinger plac'd above the croud, / Sings with a note ſo ſhrilling ſweet and loud, / Nor pariſh clerk who calls the pſalm ſo clear, / Like Bowzybeus ſooths th' attentive ear.”

   “The labourers of the day were all retired to reſt; the lights were out in every cottage; no ſounds were heard but of the ſhrilling cock, and the deep-mouthed watch-dog, at hollow diſtance.”

   “They, as a cloud of ſtarlings or of daws / Fly ſcreaming ſhrill, warn'd timely of the kite / Or hawk, devourers of the ſmaller kinds, / So they ſhrill—clamouring toward the fleet, / Haſted before Æneas and the might / Of Hector, nor the battle heeded more.”

noun

1. A shrill sound.

   “[W]hen at laſt / I heard a voyce, which loudly to me called, / That with ſuddein ſhrill I was appalled.”

   “The shrill of the whistle from the locomotive “Charlestown” announced the arrival of the first train into Fitchburg on 5 March 1845— [...]”

   “Sonographic example of two consecutive loud shrills of a common marmoset, showing sound frequencies of harmonics reaching into the ultrasonic range.”