shrill
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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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
Lopez handed one to Juan Ballena, who immediately used it — a shrill, reedy blast soon answered by others.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 9, 2025
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
But the moment was interrupted by something shrill and peculiar piercing the night.
From "The Detective's Assistant" by Kate Hannigan
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
Over this period, the political discourse also became shriller.
From BBC ● Nov. 2, 2017
The tone of public debate in Germany has become shriller over the past two years with the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants.
From Time ● Jan. 1, 2017
It was like the whistling of a piccolo many times magnified—shrill and shriller till it keened with the terror of a lost soul and filled the room with the piercingness of itself.
From "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov
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
‘Babs always thinks that everybody’s always talkin’ about her,’ added Bobbin, in his shrillest voice.
From The Youngest Girl in the School by Sharp, Evelyn
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
The fox shrills for freedom from its cage, where it is held because of the value of its fur.
From Time Magazine Archive
When Aunty Ifeoma woke me up, the room was dim and the shrills of the night crickets were dying away.
From "Purple Hibiscus" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"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
The conch was snatched from his hands and Piggy's voice shrilled.
From "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding
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
On the hill, a breeze stirred the tall cypresses; swallows darted, shrilling, in the great bowl of light below them.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 10, 2018
He felt alone and unprotected, and scraping crickets and shrilling tree frogs and croaking toads seemed to be carrying the melody of evil.
From "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck
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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