Screeching

How to spell screeching

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce screeching

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does screeching mean?

1. verbMaking a long, harsh, high-pitched cry or sound.
2. adjectiveProducing or marked by a harsh, shrill, high-pitched sound.

Screeching in a sentence

• verb

  The gulls were screeching above the harbour all morning.

• adjective

  The screeching brakes of the bus made the whole queue flinch.

• verb

  She woke to the sound of a fox screeching in the garden.

• adjective

  A screeching alarm went off in the empty office at midnight.

Where does screeching come from?

Language of origin: Other

Screech is an echoic word, meaning its sound imitates the harsh, high-pitched noise it names. It appears in the mid-1500s as an altered, more forceful version of the earlier Middle English 'scritch' or 'scrichen', recorded from the 1300s, which likewise mimicked a piercing shriek. Word historians connect this family to similar imitative forms in the Scandinavian and wider Germanic languages, such as the Old Norse 'skrikja', meaning to cry out shrilly, though the resemblance owes as much to shared sound-mimicry as to direct descent. The participle 'screeching' simply adds the regular '-ing' ending to mark an ongoing action or to describe something that screeches. The spelling keeps the double 'ee' that captures the long, drawn-out vowel of the cry, which is the part writers most often second-guess, sometimes slipping into the incorrect 'screaching'.

How the word is built

• screech (echoic root meaning a harsh, high cry)
• -ing (present participle / adjectival suffix)