screech

/skɹiːt͡ʃ/

screech

English Noun Top 5,431

American (Lessac) (medium)

Female 0.5s

American (Amy) (medium)

Female 0.8s

American (Ryan) (medium)

Male 0.6s

Definition

A high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.

Etymology

1602; altered with expressive vowel lengthening from earlier skrech (1577), variant of obsolete scritch, from Middle English skriken, shrichen, schrichen (1250), from Old English (attested as scriccettan) and Old Norse skríkja, both from Proto-Germanic *skrīkijaną (compare Icelandic skríkja, Old Saxon scricōn, Danish skrige, Swedish skrika), derivative of *skrīhaną (compare Middle Dutch schriën, German schreien, Low German dial. schrien, schriegen), ultimately of imitative origin.