shrill

“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

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

A shrill whistle came from the left, and I looked over to see Elliot already sitting in one of the simulation chairs.

From "Glitch" by Laura Martin

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

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

Over this period, the political discourse also became shriller.

From BBC ● Nov. 2, 2017

The boar had a similar squeal, but what we were hearing now seemed higher pitched, shriller, almost like... like if the boar had an angry girlfriend.

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

It was over a mix-up right in his own yard that Butch was shrillest and worst behaved.

From Time Magazine Archive

He waved his empty hands wildly up and down, cheering at the top of his voice; but his shrillest Hosannahs were heard only by himself.

From Joel: A Boy of Galilee by Johnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows)

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

Hornet pressed a button on the telephone and Esther's voice shrilled through Victor's office.

From "The Thief Lord" by Cornelia Funke

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

Still shrilling on the whistle, he fought and floundered against the tide of the crowd.

From "Johnny Tremain" by Esther Hoskins Forbes