Other forms: screeching, screeches, screeched
To screech is to make a high, harsh noise that hurts to listen to. Tyres screech when a car brakes hard, a gull screeches over the harbour, a chair screeches as somebody drags it across a tiled floor.
It works for people as well, and it is not flattering: whoever screeches has lost control — she screeched at the children from the top of the stairs. As a noun it is the sound itself, a screech of brakes, a screech of laughter. A bird carries the name, the screech owl, whose call is a thin wavering cry instead of a hoot. Screech to a halt is the set phrase, used first of cars and then of anything that stops dead: the talks screeched to a halt in November. Next to it, shriek is more human and scream is rounder and louder; screech is the one with metal in it.
1verbscreechTo make a high, harsh, unpleasant sound.
“The bus screeched as it took the corner.”
2verbshoutTo shout or say something in a high harsh voice.
“She screeched his name across the car park.”
3nounsoundA high harsh sound.
“There was a screech of brakes and then silence.”
Also accepted in games: shriek
Screech is a noise written down. It shows up around 1602 as a stretched form of skrech, itself a variant of the older scritch, and behind those stand Middle English skriken and Old Norse skrikja, from Proto-Germanic *skrikijana. The Scandinavian versions still say it plainly: Danish skrige, Swedish skrika. Every stage of the word is somebody imitating a sound.
Proto-Germanic
*skrīkijaną
Old Norse
skríkja
Middle English
skriken
English, today
screech
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 of the sound origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Everyday Verbs, Sounds & Noises