Contextualizebeta

shrill

adj
/ʃɹɪl/US

Etymology

From Late Middle English schrille, shirle, shrille (“of a sound: high-pitched, piercing; producing such a sound”), possibly from the earlier shil, schille (“loud, resounding; high-pitched”), from Old English sċill (“sonorous sounding”), of Germanic origin and probably ultimately imitative. The r in the word was introduced by analogy to Middle English skrīke, skrīken, scrēmen, possibly to avoid confusion with non-Anglian forms of schelle (modern English shell) where Old English sċill (“sonorous sounding”) and sċill (“shell”) existed. The word is cognate with Icelandic skella (“crash, bang, slam”), Low German schrell (“sharp in taste or tone”).

  1. inherited from sċill — “sonorous sounding”
  2. inherited from schrille

Definitions

  1. High-pitched and piercing.

    • The woods rang with shrill cries of the birds.
    • 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; [...]

  2. Having a shrill voice.

  3. Sharp or keen to the senses.

  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. Fierce, loud, strident.

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

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at shrill. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01shrill02piercing03hole04excavation05distinction06discrimination07acute

A definitional loop anchored at shrill. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at shrill

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA