shrill

Along a line of wooden power poles running to the horizon in both directions, 14 miles from the nearest paved road, a solitary pay phone beckons with the shrill sound of impatient civilization.

It draws on another 21st-century innovation: the rise of shrill reality TV like "The Apprentice."

Then all the shrill noise of combat hits the ears at once and you understand how impossible it is to make sense of anything.

Shakespeare’s play assumes the shrieks and shrill cries of a B-movie.

These go-nowhere debates exhaust progressive energies and make it easier for the right to paint the left as "shrill."