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Definitions

shrill

[shril] / ʃrɪl /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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The trust said this included dingy skipper, which is a small moth-like butterfly, and the shrill carder bumblebee, which was only found in two areas in England.

From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026

Scream queen Samara Weaving has an extraordinary yell: shrill, feral and ferocious, like a mongoose before it goes on the attack.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 19, 2026

“My grandmother was a sharecropper in Arkansas, and I know that this is the same thing,” a man shouts at one point as whistles shrill and a handheld siren wails.

From Slate ● Feb. 11, 2026

Bars beckon along our path of modern-day “riau-riau music, the pipes shrill and the drums pounding,” and we dance our way in and out of a few joints, looking for the right madness.

From Salon ● Nov. 8, 2025

Then a high, shrill whistle sounded, and after a few seconds Bubber came out from around the corner of the house.

From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

Ethan Hawke registers in a much lower key, which counterbalances Amanda’s shriller moments.

From Salon ● Dec. 8, 2023

"We are seeing the rhetoric on topics like migration get shriller," said Stefan Marschall, political scientist at the University of Duesseldorf.

From Reuters ● Jun. 7, 2023

Three decades on, the tone has become shriller.

From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2022

Where the EP gave it Plant’s rich tenor core, the album leaves him shriller and scratchier, closer to Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe or Geddy Lee of Rush.

From New York Times ● Oct. 17, 2018

It got louder and shriller until it was too loud to bear.

From Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack

His half-sublimated wranglings with race are more complex and fraught than either his shrillest detractors or his most fawning defenders would have us believe.

From Salon ● May 30, 2012

Pick: Giants Jets at Bills Line: Jets by 5 1/2 The Jets have joined the Chargers and the Cowboys as one of the league’s shrillest teams.

From New York Times ● Oct. 1, 2010

“It’s a big test for the leadership. We cannot listen to the loudest, shrillest voices in our party,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican who represents the Philadelphia suburbs.

From Washington Post

Villon reversed the process: his landscapes seethed with the brightest, sharpest and sometimes shrillest colors he could mix.

From Time Magazine Archive

Ronnie was waving his little hat and shouting the shrillest of cheers, and Mrs. Trevellyan was clapping her best.

From The School by the Sea by Angela Brazil

Binoche is superbly entertaining as she first trills and shrills on the ways of proper womanhood, and then starts to relish the taste of new freedoms, like wearing trousers.

From New York Times ● May 5, 2023

Now his dog barks, the phone shrills and the laughter of chorus girls taunts him; yet he can’t make a sound.

From Time ● Dec. 27, 2011

Classically trained, Ponty wails, shrills and sails through Hypomode de Sol, The Name of the Game and Scarborough Fair-Canticle.

From Time Magazine Archive

But what Broadway saw last week was a story which, though it lacks tremolo, shrills along as vibrant and masculine as a trumpet call.

From Time Magazine Archive

Five days later, a newscaster shrills that Paris has fallen to the Germans, and the German people are overjoyed to see the Nazi flag hoisted over France.

From "The Boy Who Dared" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

"Prepare for a hard landing," Deutsche Bank shrilled in a Wednesday report.

From Reuters ● Apr. 21, 2022

Magnets, magnets! shrilled my landlady, when I got back from weeks of doing what I was doing.

From The New Yorker ● Oct. 21, 2019

“There’ll never be another like him,” she shrilled when she recovered.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 5, 2016

The biometer shrilled again: temperature 102.5 and climbing.

From Nature ● Jun. 29, 2011

His heart beat out a heavy rhythm and the melody of the maybe pearl shrilled in his ears.

From "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck

Thus was born the Nightingale of Samarkand, who was lowered in a cage during the bed scene while shrilling an insane modal tune to keep the Princess awake.

From New York Times ● Aug. 9, 2022

A feeling like alarm bells shrilling in an empty building, no one to turn the alarm off, no one to respond.

From Slate ● Aug. 27, 2020

Across social media, people are shrilling with outrage over the noise.

From Washington Times ● Jul. 2, 2020

Anyone who has thrilled to the shrilling of cicadas or marvelled at the bizarre behaviour of praying mantises will be entranced by this homage to the class Insecta.

From Nature ● Dec. 4, 2018

The crickets seemed to take up the conversation then; their loud shrilling seemed so close, although they well might have been miles away.

From "Purple Hibiscus" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie


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