Scream
verbTo make a loud, sharp, piercing cry, usually from fear, pain, or excitement.
How to spell scream
6 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce scream
What does scream mean?
- verbTo make a loud, sharp, piercing cry, usually from fear, pain, or excitement.
- nounA loud, sharp, piercing cry.
Scream in a sentence
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verb
The toddler began to scream when the balloon burst.
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noun
A sudden scream from the next room made everyone freeze.
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verb
He had to scream over the noise of the machinery to be heard.
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noun
The rollercoaster drop drew a long scream from the riders.
Where does scream come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Scream entered English in the Middle Ages, appearing as the Middle English verb 'scremen', meaning to cry out sharply or shriek. Its earlier history is not fully documented, but it clearly belongs to a family of northern European words for harsh, piercing cries: it is closely related to Old Norse 'skræma', meaning to terrify or scare, and to the Dutch 'schreeuwen' and the German 'schreien', both meaning to shout or shriek. The shared 'skr' opening of these words is widely thought to be imitative, echoing the very sound of a sharp human cry, which is part of why the spelling keeps that distinctive 'scr' cluster. Over time the verb picked up a noun use for the cry itself, and a lively informal sense meaning something hugely funny, as in 'the film was a scream'. Because the word is short and phonetic, the only real spelling trap is remembering that the long 'ee' sound is written 'ea' rather than 'ee'.
How the word is built
- scream (single Germanic root; no separable prefix or suffix)
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