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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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It is home to the rare broad-leaved cudweed and shrill carder bumblebee and the Essex Wildlife Trust fears "incredibly rare" habitats would be "destroyed".

From BBC Sep. 15, 2026

“It’s like, every second word somebody’s doing a shrill horrible laugh,” he said, “and it’s nonstop through the entire piece.”

From The Wall Street Journal May 8, 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

That shrill, high-pitched squeal you’ve been hearing lately?

From Los Angeles Times Jan. 8, 2026

Olanna laughed too and felt for a moment that her laughter sounded different, more shrill, than theirs.

From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

“Oh, you wicked man!” she howled, in a voice just a little shriller than normal.

From "The Inquisitor's Tale" by Adam Gidwitz

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 shrillest voice raised was that of Jennie Lee, onetime M.P. and wife of Labor M.P.

From Time Magazine Archive

I regretted only that I had not been better advised in my choice of an hotel The dining saloon rang with American voices in their shrillest tones.

From The English in the West Indies or, The Bow of Ulysses by James Anthony Froude

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

Holding the other at bay with a sword cane, Cadell shrills a police whistle as the curtain falls.

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

“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

“What is it then?” shrilled a woman’s voice.

From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare

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




Vocabulary lists containing shrill


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