shrill
Americanadjective
-
shriller,
comparative
-
shrillest
superlative
-
high-pitched and piercing in sound quality.
a shrill cry.
-
producing such a sound.
-
full of or characterized by such a sound.
shrill music.
-
betraying some strong emotion or attitude in an exaggerated amount, as antagonism or defensiveness.
-
marked by great intensity; keen.
the shrill, incandescent light of the exploding bomb.
verb (used with or without object)
-
shrills,
present (3rd person singular)
-
shrilled,
past participle, past
-
shrilling
present participle
noun
adverb
adjective
-
sharp and high-pitched in quality
-
emitting a sharp high-pitched sound
verb
-
to utter (words, sounds, etc) in a shrill tone
-
rare (tr) to cause to produce a shrill sound
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
shrillsimple
-
shrillssimple
-
have shrilledperfect
-
has shrilledperfect
-
am shrillingprogressive
-
are shrillingprogressive
-
is shrillingprogressive
-
have been shrillingperfect progressive
-
has been shrillingperfect progressive
Past
-
shrilledsimple
-
had shrilledperfect
-
was shrillingprogressive
-
were shrillingprogressive
-
had been shrillingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of shrill
1300–50; Middle English shrille (adj., v.); akin to Old English scrallettan to sound loudly; cognate with German schrill (adj.), schrillen (v.); compare Old Norse skrīll rabble
Explanation
A shrill sound is high pitched and sharp, like the squeak of the mouse in your cupboard or the sound of your “eek” when you hear it. Closer to a shriek than a trill, a shrill tone is one that might make you cover your ears, usually because the tone is so high and sharp. A high pitched voice, a classroom of excited first graders, or the sound of chalk scraping the board can all be shrill, as can a color or light that looks as sharp and intense as a shrill tone sounds.
Vocabulary lists containing shrill
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
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List 5
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"Easter, 1916" by W.B. Yeats
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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.
See Examples For:
"I heard a girl behind me… a shrill shriek. I turned and there was a huge, huge fin behind her. It was massive," she told Nine Network's 60 Minutes.
From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2026
When a shrill roar cut across the train yard a few seconds later, Bartlett promptly broke into tears.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 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
“Making shrill and defiant statements against Trump are about the clearest way to get on his bad side.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 3, 2025
I sat there a moment before the memory of the shrill siren of the Recruiter’s whistle shoved under my feet like slivers.
From "The Marrow Thieves" by Cherie Dimaline
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
Her voice sounded shriller than usual, but I guess that wasn’t surprising given what she was fighting.
From "The Last Olympian" by Rick Riordan
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
The Reagan Administration heeded one of the shrillest last week by announcing voluntary restraints on steel imports.
From Time Magazine Archive
The cheers were given in the shrillest tones of the Meadow-Brook Girls.
From The Meadow-Brook Girls Across Country The Young Pathfinders on a Summer Hike by Janet Aldridge
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
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
But when some world-shaking event takes place, La Prensa's horn shrills and a Prensa office boy trots downtown to pay the fine before its echo has died away.
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
The biometer shrilled again: temperature 102.5 and climbing.
From Nature ● Jun. 29, 2011
"We love you Oxford, we do!" the children shrilled.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 22, 2010
Their baby voices shrilled out in Handel’s “Largo” and they knew it merely by the title of “Hymn.” little boys whistled part of Dvorak’s New World Symphony as they played marbles.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
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
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
