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Shriek   Listen
verb
Shriek  v. i.  (past & past part. shrieked; pres. part. shrieking)  To utter a loud, sharp, shrill sound or cry, as do some birds and beasts; to scream, as in a sudden fright, in horror or anguish. "It was the owl that shrieked." "At this she shrieked aloud; the mournful train Echoed her grief."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shriek" Quotes from Famous Books



... after that there came an appalling female shriek, and a dreadful masculine yell, from the region of the kitchen, accompanied by a subdued squeak of such extreme sweetness, that it could have come only from the throat of Mademoiselle Nelina. Ned and the ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... And above the ingle was another slab of oak from the same tree. Her little old step-mother sat in a stuff chair covered with a sheep-skin; she sat there night and day, shivering with the shaking palsy. At times she let out of her an eldritch shriek, very like the call of a hedgehog; but she never spoke, and she was fed with a spoon by a little misbegotten son of Edward Hall's. The old step-father sat always opposite her; he had no use of his legs, and his head was always stiffly ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... laughing, the Fiend caught the hand from the floor, Releasing the babe, kissed the wound, drank the gore; A little jet ring from her finger then drew, Thrice shrieked a loud shriek and was ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... profit by it, though not soon enough; for the first moment I was too much alarmed. She could not feel pain or blows, and rose instantaneously. I forced the door some little way, and she then gave a single shriek!—It was a dreadful one—and was followed by a repulse which I could not overcome. The door was closed, and like lightning locked. I then heard her begin to pant and heave for breath—After a few ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... those chances which often occur, as if to aggravate misfortune, it was Rosalie who received the fatal letter from the postman's hands! She tore it open; read its dreadful contents; and with a wild and frenzied shriek, fell senseless to the ground! She was borne to her bed, where every care and attention was bestowed; but her illness rapidly assumed a threatening and a dangerous character. A fever seized her frame; she became at once ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various

... There came the eery shriek of a siren: the train was moving. Swiftly it gathered speed till it seemed as though my protesting body was being forced through a wall of air grown suddenly solid. Myriad fingers pulled at me, seeking to hurl me to destruction. Even through ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... coiffure, as the missing transformation, appallingly out of wave, was plucked from the baggy pocket of the old green overcoat, and brandished before her astonished eyes. Struggling to restrain the dual impulse to shriek and clutch, no wonder she appeared a conscience-stricken creature in that great man's watchful eyes. His big voice shook her and shook ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... in the fog, she writes him off, so to speak. 'Poor feller,' ses she, 'he's at sea,' just as we say, 'Poor feller, he's in the churchyard.' An' so, when that woman felt someone touch her on the arm in Main Street, and turned an' found it was the Second Engineer, she gave a shriek like a lost soul, an' fainted on the sidewalk. So it happened. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... anything about death, and went on trying to wake him. At last he observed that, although his mouth was wide open, the breath did not come from it. Thereupon his heart began to fail him. But when he lifted an eyelid, and saw what was under it, the house rang with the despairing shriek ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... the cupboards Victoire flung herself down, and, with a piercing shriek, cried, "Non, jamais, monsieur l'officier! Jamais! I will rather die than let you see ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... to place my lantern upon the table at the bed's head, that it might help me to see and to aid Lossing, a shriek rang from the room at the rear, and the next moment I saw the knife sent flying from the hand of Delbras, and the two go down, still struggling. A moment I watched them struggling there, and then somehow the villain wrenched one hand free and gripped it with an awful clutch upon Lossing's throat; ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... the loud shriek of acute pain, the long-drawn moan of the dying, the piercing appeal of those conscious, but unable to move, filled every echo, and one of the first and most pressing duties for all who could be spared was ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... better get right to the telephone, an' notify Jack Weston. He ain't much of a police officer, to be sure, but I guess he can deal with bums like these—too stewed to answer me, even!" Then, as she drew nearer, she gave a shriek that might well have been heard almost as far off as Wallacetown, "Land of mercy! It's Sylvia ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... in rag huts large enough only for a litter of pigs, scratching roasted potatoes out of the dying embers of a coke fire, as thousands are doing to-day, is enough to freeze the blood in one's veins, make one utter a shriek of horror and despair, and to bring down the wrath of God upon the country that allows such a state ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... for which the agonized son had been listening! An old man's shriek, hoarse with the remorse of sleepless nights and days of unimaginable regret and foreboding! It cuts the night. It cuts its way into his heart. He feels his senses failing him, yet he must glance once more at the window ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... distance, the long shriek of the engine, on its way from New York, streamed upon his ears and set him thinking. A good many years since he had been to New York!—nine, positively nine—not since the year after his wife's death. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... tightened their hold. Rebecca was struggling fiercely and in silence, save for an occasional shriek ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... Again that shriek of rage and utter defiance. The rocks echoed it eerily, and Drew found it hard to judge either distance or direction. The wind was rising, too, scooping up dust to throw against men and boulders. But that wild stud could ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... can feel them. He knows how easy it is to appear profound by putting anew the riddles which nobody can answer; he knows how strong is the temptation towards the insoluble. But upon these subjects he also knows how to hold his tongue; he does not shriek in the streets, but he bows his head. He has found no answer—he no more than the feeblest of us, and yet in his inmost soul there is ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... Bandchen, given by anatomists to the object in question. According to H. Carstens the frenulum is called in Low German keekel-reem or kikkel-reem, which seems to be derived from kakeln, "to cry, shriek," and reem, "band, cord," so that the word really signifies "speech-band." If it is cut in children who have difficulty in speaking before the first year of life, or soon after, they will be cured of stuttering and made to speak well. To a man or woman who does a good deal of talking, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... a little shriek of horror on hearing this allusion, and protested against so profane ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... an hour after the band had been settled in their quarters that a shriek was heard at the end of the street. John ran out in time to see a woman struck down; while a body of some twenty half-drunken soldiers, with drawn swords, were trying to force in the door of a house. John sounded his bugle, and there was a rush of armed men into the street. John ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... shrill shriek as the sleigh went over and then lay quite still in a heap by the side of the road, with Stephen across her feet. The automobile seemed to have recovered its serenity, for it now stood still like any well-behaved machine, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... instant, he started to his feet with a shriek of terror. A human head dropped from his nerveless grasp on the floor, and rolled to Henry's feet. It was the hideous head that Agnes had seen hovering above her, in the vision of ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... was dressed, I went and called upon that lovely woman. She gave a shriek and pretty near fainted when she saw me. She called me Ferdinand—I'm ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... for the tumult in the jungle still continued, though the terrible pursuit seemed to be passing farther away. The giant avengers were still crashing through the jungle after their prey; and an occasional heartrending shriek told of another luckless wretch who had met ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... of fire chained to this cursed clay, Galled by its fetters of flesh, seared with a thousand scars, Shriek and struggle and beat its breast on its prison bars Thro' the night's long dark of despair till the dawning of ultimate day, Till the glow of that ultimate dawn transfigure the tortured face And the sacred ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner

... is in love with the daughter of the governor of the city, tries to save her, but dies. The poem is frequently vigorous, but it ends badly. Parisina, though unequal, is on the whole a poem of a higher order than the others of the period. The trial scene exhibits some dramatic power, and the shriek of the lady mingling with Ugo's funeral dirge lingers in our ears, along with the ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... to move. With a shrill shriek from the engine, and the banging of doors, it glided out of the station. Soon its tail lights were swinging out of sight. But the Russian and the American boy remained, while the train, with its load of free and cheerful passengers, went ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine

... the armies of this Ghibelin. I pity those who halted home with wounds Dealt by his hand. I pity widowed eyes That he set running; maiden hearts that turn, Sick with despair, from ranks thinned down by him; Mothers that shriek, as the last stragglers fling Their feverish bodies by the fountain-side, Dumb with mere thirst, and faintly point to him, Answering the dame's quick questions. I have seen Unburied bones, and skulls—that seemed to ask, From their blank eye-holes, vengeance at my hand— Shine ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... you are in a bewildering whirl of waters. The shore seems to fly past you. Crash! You are right on that rock, and (I don't care who you are) you will feel your heart jump into your mouth, and you will catch the side with a grip that leaves a mark on your fingers afterwards. No! With a shriek of command to the steersman, and a plunge of his paddle, the bowman wrenches the canoe out of its course. Another stroke or two, another plunge forward, and with a loud exulting yell from the bowman, who flourishes his paddle round his head, you pitch headlong down the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... country becomes an abomination of desolation; then appear evidences of struggle, the marks of monsters: then the awful, boiling river, with the nerve-shattering shriek from its depths as he thrust in his spear. On the other bank, fresh evidences of fearful combats, followed farther along by the appearance of engines of torture. Those of his companions who had survived the beasts had there perished in this frightful manner. Nevertheless, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... apple tree that's yet alive saw something, I suppose, Of what it was that happened there, and what no mortal knows. Some one on the mountain heard far off a master shriek, And then there was a light that showed the ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-eyed priest from ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... the Accipitrine class, hawks of different kinds, making sad havoc amongst the smaller birds. About the period of my return from the north they all took their departure, and we were soon wholly deserted. We no longer heard the discordant shriek of the parrots, or the hoarse croaking note of the bittern. They all passed away simultaneously in a single day; the line of migration being directly to the N.W., from which quarter we had small flights of ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... inevitable evils he is sometimes found to oppose a passive fortitude, such as the Stoics attributed to their ideal sage. An European warrior who rushes on a battery of cannon with a loud hurrah, will sometimes shriek under the surgeon's knife, and fall in an agony of despair at the sentence of death. But the Bengalee, who would see his country overrun, his house laid in ashes, his children murdered or dishonoured, without having the spirit to strike ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... him, smiling. "You know how likely I am to require protection from your importunities." She dropped her pretty head, and began plaiting with her fingers the silken gown over her knee. "Or how likely I would be to shriek for it even if"—she looked up with childlike directness—"even if I ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... against the wife he still loved; and at the grievous appearance that she was willing to sacrifice him upon the British gallows rather than let him mar her purpose, he flung her away with all necessary force, so that, with a final shriek of pain and dismay, she fell to ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... couple, and make them man and wife before her very eyes; and when she had seen them walk away together upon their path of flowers, followed by the tremendous shouts of the hilarious multitude, in which her one despairing shriek was lost ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... his spade, the old gentleman scrambled towards the little girl as quickly as his rusty joints would let him,—while Pansie, as apprehensive and quick of motion as a fawn, started up with a shriek of mirth and fear to escape him. It so happened that the garden-gate was ajar; and a puff of wind blowing it wide open, she escaped through this fortuitous avenue, followed by great-grandpapa ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... joys! to go with a locomotive! To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the laughing locomotive! To push with resistless way and speed off in ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... is my house and this my little wife.' 'Mine too' said Philip 'turn and turn about:' When, if they quarrell'd, Enoch stronger-made Was master: then would Philip, his blue eyes All flooded with the helpless wrath of tears, Shriek out 'I hate you, Enoch,' and at this The little wife would weep for company, And pray them not to quarrel for her sake, And say she would be ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... shriek of terror from the whole of the French army, and I should think at least forty thousand guns were levelled at me in an instant. But as the muskets were not loaded, and the cannon had only wadding in them, these facts, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... "good situations" of the mundane comedy. Now the other side presented itself to Lily, the volcanic nether side of the surface over which conjecture and innuendo glide so lightly till the first fissure turns their whisper to a shriek. Lily knew that there is nothing society resents so much as having given its protection to those who have not known how to profit by it: it is for having betrayed its connivance that the body social punishes the offender ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... slowly and solemnly; nor when they stood around the open grave in the kirkyard. When the first clod fell on the coffin—oh, heart-breaking sound!—Dan made one blind step towards Shenac, and would have fallen but for Angus Dhu. Little Flora cried out wildly, and her sister held her fast. She did not shriek, nor swoon, nor break into weeping, as did Shenac Dhu; but "her face would never be whiter," said they who saw it, and many a kindly and anxious eye followed her as the long line of mourners slowly turned on ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson

... so much engrossed with his work that it was some moments before he heard, and meantime it was terrifying to see how swiftly the water arose, how dangerously near to its edge grew the side of the boat! The children began to shriek and stand on their seats, and the Captain seized Inda in his arms and held her up, ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... hitherto so smooth and level, became stony and hilly. For more than a mile we drove along the edge of a precipice, and so near, that it seemed to me, should the horses deviate a hairbreadth from their usual track, we must be dashed into eternity. Wonderful to relate, I did not "Oh!" nor "Ah!" nor shriek once, but remained crouched in the back of the wagon, as silent as death. When we were again in safety, the driver exclaimed, in the classic patois of New England, "Wall, I guess yer the fust woman that ever rode over that are hill without hollering." He ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... and yet nearer, soundlessly over the stones. His eyes, gleaming, devilish, were to her as the eyes of a devouring monster. In her agony she tried to shriek aloud, but her voice was gone, her throat seemed locked. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... was steeped in quietness. The rustling of the dry leaves under the feet of the woman was all she heard, except when the low sighing of the wind, the sharp bark of a fox, or the shriek of an owl, broke the silence for a moment, and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... a piercing shriek. The Inspector turned quickly around. Mrs. Rheinholdt, who had disregarded his advice, was standing on ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and shriek her hatred into the evil face of the man who had tricked her. She wanted to frighten him, to threaten, to lash him with her tongue. For she was conscious all the while of her own inability to harm ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... at the little pane. Vassilissa got up, went to the window, uttered a little shriek, giggled, and began whispering with some one. On going back to her place, she sighed, and then fell ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... they were crouching beside the wall. Fil was trembling like a leaf, Nora declared afterward that her hair stood on end, Ingred and Verity felt shivers run down their spines. Nearer and nearer came the white figure. Its approach was more than flesh and blood could stand. With a wild shriek Fil dashed across the lawn, followed closely by ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... blue jay kept close watch over our movements, but at last decided that we are harmless, and with a last shriek of defiance flew away to pour out his vituperations on other ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... simple, yet inexpressibly touching; the foundation of his character is sensibility; he feels all he says. He never employs any superfluity of action for the purpose of producing effect, nor does he seek, by first raising his voice almost to a shriek, and then lowering it to a whisper, to startle his audience into a fit of enthusiasm; on the contrary, a studied sobriety, both of speech and gesture, is one of the peculiar features of his acting." When Bouffe visits England, we recommend some of our actors, who at present ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... individual tragedy was enacted before every eye. With a yell the drunken maniac rushed to the rail. The nigger was at his heels—he was too late. Uttering another and more piercing shriek, the madman was overboard at a bound; one of his bundles preceded him; the other dropped like ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... continued in storm,—why not so have set? Why not have died when swords swept their lightnings about me, when the glorious thunders of battle rolled around and sulphurous blasts enveloped, when the air was full of the bray of bugle and beat of drum, of shout and shriek, exultation and agony? Why not have gone with the crowd of souls reeking with daring and desire? Why, oh, why thus left alone to wither? Why still hangs that sun above me, yet wrapt and veiled and utterly obscured in thick, murk mists ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... thousands of the court, The weapon by the middle raised That all the crowd in wonder gazed. With steady arm the string he drew Till burst the mighty bow in two. As snapped the bow, an awful clang, Loud as the shriek of tempests, rang. The earth, affrighted, shook amain As when a hill is rent in twain. Then, senseless at the fearful sound, The people fell upon the ground: None save the king, the princely pair, And the great saint, the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... to stop and raise her hands. Then a fearful shriek was heard, and the fierce Sigbin came rushing down the mountain. It appeared to be greatly frightened, for it took tremendous leaps and screamed as if in terror. Over the heads of the people it jumped, and, reaching the shore, cleared the narrow channel and disappeared among ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller

... each other in the naked breadth of the ocean, nay, sometimes even touch, in the dark, with a crack of timbers, a gurgling of water, a cry of startled sleepers,—a cry mysteriously echoed in warning dreams, as the wife of some Gloucester fisherman, some coasting skipper, wakes with a shriek, calls the name of her husband, and sinks back to uneasy slumbers upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... half an hour, she observed with a sort of apathetic satisfaction, that the weather conditions of their former visit were going to be repeated now—a sudden darkness, a shriek of wind, a wild squall flashing across the surface of the little lake, and a driving rain so thick that small as the lake was, it veiled the shore ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... head and shoulders over the gun-wale, and I could distinctly hear them chopping the bone of the neck. They then wrung his neck, separated the head from the body by a slight draw of the sword, and let it drop into the water;—there was a dying shriek—a convulsive struggle—and all I could discern was the arms dangling over the side of the canoe, and the ragged stump pouring out the blood ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins

... shriek so sharp that it pierced the walls, and leapt out of bed like a mountebank of the plains of Egypt would have done. She fell upon her knees before her Prie-Dieu, joined her hands, and wept more pearls than ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... for a few seconds. Then I accomplished my life's effort in self-control. My whole being clamoured for an explosion equally violent of compressed mirth. I ached to lie back in my chair and shriek with laughter. The denouement of the little drama was so amazingly unexpected, so unexpectedly ludicrous. A glimmer of responsive humour in his eyes would have sent me off. But there he stood, with his grimmest battle-field face, denouncing ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... set to work and drew from her beautiful shoulders and gleaming, rounded arms the silken waist that covered them. She turned to get the shawl, and the waist fell to the floor, as she recoiled with a shriek of terror from an apparition that arose slowly from the depths ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien

... did not, however, lose her presence of mind, but sat down and proceeded to take thought; and when she had matured her plan she arose, dripping with blood, and walked straight home to her husband's house. On entering his room she clapped her hand to her nose, and began to gnash her teeth, and to shriek so violently, that all the members of the family were alarmed. The neighbours also collected in numbers at the door, and, as it was bolted inside, they broke it open and rushed in, carrying lights. There they saw the wife sitting upon the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... sound of cheer; (The hiss, the whirl, the crash, the creak, Of maddened wheels, the awful shriek Of awestruck men—she did ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the morning of a tournament, By these in earnest those in mockery call'd The Tournament of the Dead Innocence, Brake with a wet wind blowing, Lancelot, Round whose sick head all night, like birds of prey, The words of Arthur flying shriek'd, arose, And down a streetway hung with folds of pure White samite, and by fountains running wine, Where children sat in white with cups of gold, Moved to the lists, and there, with slow sad steps ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... transfixed. A man who was dealing paused with an outstretched card in his hand. Every eye was turned on the threshold. It was Norgate who stood there, Norgate metamorphosed, in khaki uniform—an amazing spectacle! Mrs. Barlow was the first to break the silence with a piercing shriek. Then the whole room seemed to be in a turmoil. Selingman alone sat quite still. There was a grey shade upon his face, and the veins were standing out at the back ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... rigidly—she seemed for some reason to be standing tiptoe—against the starboard partition, near her stateroom door. Her fingers were clawing her cheeks, her eyes widely dilate with horror and fright, her mouth was agape, and from it issued, as by some mechanical impulse, shriek upon hollow shriek—cries wholly flat and meaningless, having no character of any sort, mere ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... And heaven being used shorte as one syllable, when it is in verse stretched with a Diastole is like a lame dogge, that holdes up one legge.'{6} His ear was far too fine and sensitive to endure the fearful sounds uttered by the poets of this Procrust{ae}an creed. The language seemed to groan and shriek at the agonies and contortions to which it was subjected; and Spenser could not but hear its outcries. But he made himself as deaf as might be. 'It is to be wonne with custom,' he proceeds, in the letter just quoted from, 'and rough words must be studied with use. For ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales

... your wickedness. You never loved me, you only loved my riches. You have them now, and so you can stand there and gaze at me, as hard, as dumb as a stone. But I will make you hear—I will shriek it into your silence again—again—You married me for ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... knot-hole of the garret, that had opened, she had inserted the neck of an old bottle, in such a manner that when there was the least wind, most doleful and lugubrious wailing sounds proceeded from it, which, in a high wind, increased to a perfect shriek, such as to credulous and superstitious ears might easily seem to be that of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... seen them," she added in a shriek, as I started to the carrier's help. It was but a few steps to the gate, yet I reached it wet through, half blinded by sheets of water driven slantwise in my face, and with the breath nearly beaten out of me. In the open, thus, the storm seemed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... his brow contracted and his motions were quickened; when it became three feet, he hurled the lead into the water, as the gambler dashes down his last dice; and at last, as we grazed on the tail of a hank, it was almost with a shriek that he yelled out, 'Doo foots!' But our hour had not yet come; and as the water deepened to beyond the four yards that formed the extent of his line, he assumed his former dignified ease, and leisurely made known that ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... with heedless step and hanging head upon the lonely road. In another moment the spring would be taken, the thrust made, and a dying man's blood would well out upon the stones. Could she do nothing? "Brian! Brian!" she cried—or strove to cry; but the shriek seemed to be stifled before it left her lips. "Brian!" Three times she tried to call his name, with an agony of effort which, perhaps, brought her back to consciousness—for the dream, if dream it was, vanished, and ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... Mrs. Benson from her room, Robinette gave a stifled shriek in which laughter and tears were equally mingled. Then she flew like a lapwing to the fire-place and lifted off a fan of white ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Miselle did not shriek this time; but she fancies the "sable score of fingers four remain on the" arm "impressed," to which she clung during ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... will be met with a general shriek of horror on the part of our fair republican friends, and an equally general disclaimer on the part of our American gentlemen, who, so far as we know, would be quite embarrassed by the idea of assuming any such pronounced position at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... 'pear bery much pleased wid his bargain, and he slipped a cord round Phillis's arm, and tell her to go wid him. O, missy, dat was de awfullest minute in my life! Poor Phillis look at de chil'en, den at me, and wid one long, piercing shriek, dat I hear many times since, she clung round my neck, begging me to go wid her, to sabe her from de dreadful place where dey would take her! But afore I could say one word, the trader, wid a dreadful curse, seize her by de throat, and ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale

... he had a big dirty towel tied round his head. Well, say, it was de limit. At de sight of dat ferocious monster comin' after old Pat I gives one yell, drops de crank-handle of de windlass, an' makes a flyin' leap down de dump. I hears an awful shriek, an' de bucket an' de devil goes down smash to de bottom of de shaft, t'irty-five feet. But I kep' on ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... The others grouped themselves behind him. There arose a roar of voices, which ended almost in a shriek of joy which was like the shriek of a tempest. Then there burst forth the blare of brazen instruments playing the National Hymn of Samavia, and mad ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... home broken up, her husband in the gutter, her children turned into the street. At this moment there goes up from her heart a despairing cry, such as a poor, hunted, tired-out creature gives when brought to the last gasp of endurance. It was like the shriek of the hare when the hounds are upon it. She clasps her hands and cries out, ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Thirty-third Street is to be found a dingy, triangular little park plot in which a few gas-stunted, smoke-stained trees make a brave attempt to keep alive. On two sides of the triangle surface-cars whirl restlessly, while overhead the elevated trains rattle and shriek. This part of the metropolis knows little difference between day and night, for the cars never cease, the arc-lights blaze from dusk until dawn and the pavements are never ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... wild shriek, broke at last from his grasp, and dashed madly from the sitting-room to her own apartment, which she reached in time to fall fainting in Miss Rogers' arms, the sting of those bitter kisses burning her ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... little Barbara entered into Jane, and made her ungovernably gay. It passed into Kitty, and ran riot in her blood and nerves. Whenever Barbara laughed Kitty laughed, and when Kitty laughed Robert laughed too. Even Janet gave a little shriek now and then. The children thought it was all because they had had strawberries and cream for tea, and were going down to the sea to ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... retreating form—a tall, slim, exquisitely poised figure that filled her with envy and a dull sort of hatred. She did not hear a step behind her. A hand fell familiarly on her shoulder, and a coarse voice laughed something in her ear that made her jump up with an artificial little shriek of pleasure. The man nodded toward the end of ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... door, and immediately recoiled with a loud shriek. She had seen Chevalier standing on the outer steps, with arms extended, tall, black, erect as a crucifix. His hand grasped a revolver. The glint of the weapon was not perceptible; nevertheless ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... himself in by the garden-gate with his own pass-key. Ere he is aware, he is tramping up the corridor in his heavy horseman's boots—his hand is on the door—there is a woman's shriek—and Sir Hugh's tall, dark figure fills the doorway of Lucy's sitting-room, where, alas! she is not alone, for the stern, angry husband ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... With another shriek from the whistle the train started. Sinclair and Sam saw the men quietly returning the firearms to their places as it gathered way. Then they walked back to their quarters. The men on the mesa, balked of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... quarter swivels to be loaded, and watching his opportunity, when the cautious wherry came rather near, fired both of them right over the old lady's black bonnet, and sent the wad fizzing and smoking into the servant-girl's lap. I need not describe the alarm of the old woman, nor the shriek of the young one; but the grin of the well-seasoned tar who rowed, coupled with his efforts to keep the fair freight quiet where he had stowed it, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... his appearance as an Indian warrior with his war-hatchet and calumet; he danced the war dance, which excited great astonishment. He then presented his calumet to a mask, who not knowing what the ceremony meant, declined it, when the Mohawk flourished his hatchet and gave such a dreadful shriek as to set the whole company in alarm.[112] On the whole this character was so little understood that it was looked upon ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... Curdie, who immediately brought up the legserpent. To the body of the animal they bound the lord chamberlain, speechless with horror. The butler began to shriek and pray, but they bound him on the back of Clubhead. One after another, upon the largest of the creatures they bound the whole seven, each through the unveiling terror looking the villain he ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... her mouth a vivid flame, like a sharp two edged-sword, which, entering into the clouds that surrounded Hapacuson, the hag gave a horrible shriek, and the thick clouds rolling around her, she flew away ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... Gold-greedy legislators jingling bribes; Kept editors and sycophantic scribes; Liars in swarms and plunderers in tribes; They fade away before the night's advance, And fancy figures thee a devil's lance Gleaming portentous through the misty shade, While ghosts of murdered virtues shriek about ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... front of Eaglenose with clasped hands and glittering eyes, shrieking with delight as the absurd creature of wood threw up its legs and arms, kicked its own head, and all but dislocated its own limbs. Catching sight of her friend, however, she gave vent to another shriek with deeper delight in it, and, bounding towards ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... behind a doorway for the traitor, and fling in his face a bottle full of vitriol with a storm of hideous curses. Why did she not know some of the horrible names that relieve the heart, some foul insult to shriek at the mean treacherous companion who rose before her mind with the hesitating look and false constrained smile he wore at their last meeting? But even in her savage Corsican patois the great lady knew no 'nasty words,' and when she had cried 'Coward! coward! ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... done. But in the same second Drake gave a shriek of pain as a shot rang out and his ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... touched the bones became to the natives an object of the greatest awe; still they enjoyed pushing the leaves that had wrapped them up under the feet of an unsuspecting friend, who presently, warned of the danger, escaped with a terrified shriek and a wild jump. It would seem that physical disgust had as much to do with all this as religious fear, although the natives show none of this disgust at handling the remains of pigs. Naturally, the old men were the most superstitious; the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... "Keep it there, just where it is, for your life!" he cried authoritatively, and bounded forward to where Regulus was already struggling with the sail. They got it in and lashed to the mast just in time, for, with the shriek of a thousand demons, the squall whirled itself upon them. In an instant they were enveloped in a blinding horror of furious wind and rain, glare of lightning and incessant, ear-splitting thunder. A leaden darkness, illuminated only ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... tarantulas, or turning themselves into human wheels, to roll through the bed of the dying fire and out on the other side, sending up showers of sparks. All the while, they uttered a barking chant, in time to the wicked music, which seemed to shriek for war and bloodshed; and now and then they would dash after some toddling boy, catch him by the scalp-lock on his shaved head (left for the grasp of Azrail the death-angel) and force him to ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... window. The moon was not to be seen, but the clouds were thinner, and light enough was soaking through them to show a wave-tormented mass some little way out in the bay; and in that one moment in which I stood looking, a shriek pierced the howling of the wind, cutting through it like a knife. I rushed bare-headed from the house. When or how the resolve was born in me I do not know, but I flew straight to the sexton's, snatched the key from the wall, crying ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... doubling up of the sagging silhouette, and the groan of a clutch violently thrown. A woman's shriek flying thin and high like a javelin of horror. A crowd sprung full grown out of the bog of the morning. White, peering faces showing up in the brilliant paths of the acetylene lamps. A uniform pushing through. A crowbar and the hard breathing of ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... the moral aspect of nations. Idolatrous temples have crumbled at her touch, and guilt owned its deformity in her presence. The darkest habitations of earth have been irradiated with heavenly light, and the death shriek of immolated victims changed for ascriptions of praise to God and the Lamb. Envy and Malice have been rebuked by her contented look, and fretful Impatience by ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson

... worked most commonly alone. Frequently as the heavy hammer descended, breaking at regular intervals the peaceful silence of night, I recalled some scene of sorrow and agony that I had witnessed in the day; and as the echo of some shriek or stifled moan struck in fancy on my ear, I would pause to wipe the dew from my brow and curse the trade of a coffin-maker. Every day some fresh cause appeared to arise for loathing my occupation; whilst all were alike strangers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various

... year to year. The hands of each mill are divided into watches that relieve each other as regularly as the sentinels of an army. By night and day the work goes on, the unsleeping engines groan and shriek, the fiery pools of metal boil and surge. Only for a day in the week, in half-courtesy to public censure, the fires are partially veiled; but as soon as the clock strikes midnight, the great furnaces break forth with renewed fury, the clamor begins with fresh, breathless vigor, ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... A shriek of rage, of frenzy, came out of the darkness. Rita felt that consciousness was about to leave her again. She swayed forward dizzily, and a figure which seemed to belong to delirium—a lithe shadow out of which gleamed a pair of wild eyes—leapt upon ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... woman's shriek came from the chiefs house, which stood some distance apart from the other houses, and a tall brown man sprang out from among the other natives about the boats and dashed up the pathway to ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... Almost a shriek from the old woman followed the declaration, and for a few seconds the girls felt as if something dreadful might happen to the child. Then, like some wild, reckless creature, the girl Mary was seen to dash out from her shelter in the rock, unmindful of the rain ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... of smoke flashed from the Carondalet's bow, and Dick watched the shell rise with a shriek and fall short ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... sportsman, no matter how great among pheasants, foxes, and hounds, would do well to pause before resolving to brave fever for the excitement of risking such a terrific charge; the scream or trumpeting of this enormous brute when infuriated is more like what the shriek of a French steam-whistle would be to a man standing on the dangerous part of a rail-road than any other earthly sound: a horse unused to it will sometimes stand shivering instead of taking his rider out ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... down to the station platform, began to pace up and down it. If I had only dared, I could have put my finger through the crack of the planks and touched her foot as she walked over my head, but I was afraid it might startle her into a shriek, and there was no explaining to her what it meant without telling the cowboys how close they were ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... they gazed at one another with suspended breath. Then from the street below rose a wild shriek, a crash, and lo, the huge pot lay shattered in the kennel beside the man whom, Heaven directed, it had slain. As if the shock of its fall stayed for an instant even the movement of the world, a silence fell ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... across it with a pencil, wagging his head and rolling his eyes, in imitation of Mellicent's own manner of practising, producing at the same time such long-drawn, catlike wails from between his closed lips as made the listeners shriek with laughter. Mellicent, however, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... aright The oracles predictive of the wo. Phereclus fled; Meriones his flight Outstripping, deep in his posterior flesh 80 A spear infix'd; sliding beneath the bone It grazed his bladder as it pass'd, and stood Protruded far before. Low on his knees Phereclus sank, and with a shriek expired. Pedaeus, whom, although his spurious son, 85 Antenor's wife, to gratify her lord, Had cherish'd as her own—him Meges slew. Warlike Phylides[5] following close his flight, His keen lance drove into his poll, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... always 'Ali!' Treated ill or generously, he would still harp on his monotonous 'Ali!' Latterly his zeal assumed such tremendous proportions that, like a madman, he would race, the whole day, up and down the streets of the town, throwing his stick high up into the air, and shriek our, all the while, at the top of his voice, 'Ali!' This dervish was venerated by everybody as a saint, and received everywhere with the greatest distinction." Arminius Vambery, his Life and Adventures, written by Himself, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... said: "He had a hole in his stomach—you could put your two fists into it," she gave vent to a sort of shriek, and the tears gushed forth ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... this letter with a beating heart and a certain pleasant sense of exhilaration at breakfast that morning, but then this was before the blow came—before Aunt Marjorie's shriek had sounded through the room, and before Hilda had caught a glimpse of her father's face with the gray tint spreading all over it, before she had heard his ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... sniffed Nan, in some anger, and just then Tom reached over the back of the front seat and seized his brother by the shoulder with a grip that made Rafe shriek with pain. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... friends. I do not like the way they live. I have never liked Major Forrest. Last night your lodger and another man came to the Hall. They asked questions about Lord Ronald. They asked questions and they were told lies. I am sure of it. It got on my nerves. I thought I should shriek. Major Forrest said that it was he who drove Lord Ronald into Lynn, thirty-five miles away, at six o'clock in the morning. I am sure that he could not have driven the car ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Indian woman, with a shrieking infant in her arms, rushed to the door. There was a blue gunshot wound in her neck, and her features were sharpened as if in the agony of death. Another shot, and the child's small, shrill cry blended with the mother's death shriek; falling backwards the two rolled over the brow of the hill out of sight. The ball had pierced the heart of the parent through the body of her offspring. By this time a party of Spanish soldiers had surrounded the hut, one of whom, kneeling before the low door, pointed his musket into it. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... guests, some of whom, English officers, seemed both amused and surprised at our wild ways, especially at the dancing without ladies, and the mode of drinking favourite toasts, by springing up with one foot on the bench and one on the table, and the peculiar shriek of applause so unlike ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... of the fall And gazing up, he saw upon the verge Of the dark cliff above him, gathering flowers, His master's child, sweet Coralline; she leaned Out over the blank abyss, and smiled. He climbed the bank, but ere he reached the height, A shriek rang out above the water's roar; The babe had fallen, and a quadroon girl Lay fainting near, upon the treacherous sward. The babe had fallen, but with no injury yet. Karagwe slipped down upon a narrow ledge, And reaching out, caught hold the little frock, Whose folds were tangled in a bending ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... brakes began to shriek and grind upon the wheels. The train slowed; it stopped; and the voice of a guard could be heard admonishing passengers for Queensborough Pier to alight and take the branch line. In the noise the woman's response was ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... officers' need, he had pelted down among the Sioux, heedless of their yells, and keeping his gray eyes on his team. In got the three, pushing Toussaint in front, and scoured away for the post as the squaw arrived to shriek the truth to her tribe—what Red Cloud's ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... under way the details of Prettyman Sweet's outing suit, and his general get-up for camping in the wilds, was scarcely noticed. Once the boats were steering up the lake toward Lumberport, a sudden shriek from Billy Long drew the attention of the girls and Mrs. Morse to the ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... that they would have to leave the place. Already the talk about Maggie was intolerable. Grace heard it on every side. After Mathew Cardinal's visit the talk rose to a shriek. Grace knew that those sudden silences on her entrance into the room meant lively and excited discussion. "How terrible for the poor rector!" "Such an odd girl—taken out of the slums." "Yes, quite drunk. He knocked Mrs. Maxse down." "Oh I assure you that she went to see Caroline Purdie ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... leave the deck, as if compelled to remain there by the fascination of a venomous violence. At every heavy gust men, huddled together, whispered to one another,"It can blow no harder," and presently the gale would give them the lie with a piercing shriek, and drive their breath back into their throats. A fierce squall seemed to burst asunder the thick mass of sooty vapours; and above the wrack of torn clouds glimpses could be caught of the high moon rushing backwards with frightful speed over the sky, right ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... that he must effectually beat his enemy; and thanks to Little John's lessons he thrashed him so well that at the end of five minutes the young swine-herd received a final stroke across the knuckles which made him shriek, drop his staff, and turn to run down a long straight avenue in the forest where the ground ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn

... and as Bill had lingered in New York sightseeing, they reached Croyden Four Corners before him. The goods in an enormous packing-case were driven to the general store by the local teamster. Mrs. Sprague came out to see what had arrived and, with a shriek, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... me, to grip me fast, For in my hands I held the Fleece. I shook with fear, and cried aloud For help to those dark gods I know; The Fleece before me like a shield I held. His face was twisted swift To maniac grins, and leered at me! Then, with a shriek, he madly tore At the clothes that bound his aged veins; They rent; the blood gushed forth in streams, And, even as I looked, aghast And full of horror, there he lay, The king, at my very feet, all bathed In his own ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... from her lips in a piercing shriek. Gregory obeyed on the second, thinking the girl had lost her reason. The Richard dipped with a swerve which threw him violently against the coaming. As he felt the heavy hull sinking down into the water he saw that the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton



Words linked to "Shriek" :   screaming, yowl, caterwaul, screech, shout out, hollo, holler, shrieking, yell, squall, vociferation, shrill, screeching, pipe up, pipe, cry, scream, noise, outcry, call, shout



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