Shriek

//ʃɹiːk// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A sharp, shrill outcry or scream; a shrill wild cry caused by sudden or extreme terror, pain, or the like.

    "Shrieks, clamours, murmurs, fill the frighted town."

  2. 2
    sharp piercing cry wordnet
  3. 3
    An exclamation mark. UK, slang
  4. 4
    a high-pitched noise resembling a human cry wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    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. intransitive

    "Feebly ſhe ſhriekt, but ſo feebly indeed / That Britomart heard not the ſhrilling ſound."

  2. 2
    utter a shrill cry wordnet
  3. 3
    To utter sharply and shrilly; to utter in or with a shriek or shrieks. transitive

    "The ghostly owl, shrieking his baleful note."

Synonyms

All synonyms
screamscreechshrillbarkbattle crybawl

Example

More examples

"When I lifted a potted plant in my garden, there were swarms of little insects crawling underneath, and I instinctively let out a shriek."

Etymology

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.

Related phrases

shriek owlshrieking sixtiesexclamation markhigh pitchedloud cryscared people

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.