shrew
1- a woman of violent temper and speech; termagant.
Origin of shrew
1Synonyms for shrew
See more synonyms for on Thesaurus.comshrew
2- any of several small, mouselike insectivores of the genus Sorex and related genera, having a long, sharp snout.
Origin of shrew
2Related Words for shrew
wench, fury, siren, hussy, bitch, hellion, carper, detractor, vixen, virago, nag, scold, battle-ax, biddy, harridan, harpy, madcap, termagant, backbiter, porcupineExamples from the Web for shrew
Contemporary Examples of shrew
Read another way, she is a horrible mother, an uptight snob, and a bit of a shrew.
Colm Toibin Describes The Creation Of His Quiet Masterpiece ‘Nora Webster’Jennie Yabroff
November 3, 2014
All the parts for women are awful, and chauvinistic and they have to play a shrew.
The Sex Scenes in ‘The Spectacular Now’ Are Awkward, Honest, and All Too RealAnna Klassen
August 2, 2013
Her popularity is up, her guard is down, and her image as a shrew is a relic of the past.
Historical Examples of shrew
But Mirandy was no shrew; she was simply troubled about many things.
Meadow GrassAlice Brown
The jade had to come to him, at last, completely subdued, as in the “Taming of the Shrew.”
Blood and IronJohn Hubert Greusel
His wife is a shrew, a termagant, who embitters every hour of his existence.
The Lion's SkinRafael Sabatini
Columbine snapped like the shrew she masked: "You little sneak!"
NobodyLouis Joseph Vance
The ii point is that, if a woman have a sharp nose, then most commenly she is a shrew.
Shakespeare Jest-Books;Unknown
shrew
- Also called: shrewmouse any small mouse-like long-snouted mammal, such as Sorex araneus (common shrew), of the family Soricidae: order Insectivora (insectivores)See also water shrew Related adjective: soricine
- a bad-tempered or mean-spirited woman
Word Origin for shrew
Word Origin and History for shrew
small insectivorous mammal, Old English screawa "shrew-mouse," unknown outside English, and "the absence of evidence for the word between the OE. period and the 16th c is remarkable" [OED]. Perhaps from Proto-Germanic *skraw-, from PIE *skreu- "to cut; cutting tool" (see shred (n.)), in reference to the shrew's pointed snout. Alternative Old English word for it was scirfemus, from sceorfan "to gnaw."
The meaning "peevish, malignant, clamorous, spiteful, vexatious, turbulent woman" [Johnson] is late 14c., from earlier sense of "spiteful person" (male or female), mid-13c., traditionally said to derive from some supposed malignant influence of the animal, which was once believed to have a venomous bite and was held in superstitious dread (cf. beshrew). Paired with sheep from 1560s as the contrasting types of wives.