shrill

“I know James isn’t going to take the impression in a more self-righteous or shrill direction,” he says—not because “SNL” is playing things safe, but because the bit simply wouldn’t be as funny.

Thatcher was seen as "strange and shrill" when she got the job, but became the party's most successful boss of modern times.

Along a line of wooden power poles running to the horizon in both directions, 14 miles from the nearest paved road, a solitary pay phone beckons with the shrill sound of impatient civilization.

It draws on another 21st-century innovation: the rise of shrill reality TV like "The Apprentice."

Then all the shrill noise of combat hits the ears at once and you understand how impossible it is to make sense of anything.