Other forms: squealing, squeals, squealed
To squeal is to make a long high cry. Squeal with delight, brakes squealed, the pig squealed.
It covers pleasure and pain alike, and pigs, children and brakes are the classic sources. Squealing brakes are worn brake pads telling you so deliberately — the wear indicator is designed to squeal. In criminal slang, to squeal means to inform on somebody. Note squeal with laughter; and squeaky, which is a different and smaller sound with its own word.
1verbsquealTo make a long high cry.
“The piglets squealed when the farmer picked them up.”
2verbinformTo inform on somebody.
“One of the gang squealed to the police in exchange for a shorter sentence.”
squeal is a high cry.
Middle English squelen is probably from Old Norse and is imitative. English has a whole family for high sounds — squeak, squeal, squawk, screech — all of them made by ear and none with a proper ancestry.
Proto-Indo-European
*skel-
Proto-Germanic
*skwel- — to chatter, babble, scream
Old Norse
skvala — to squeal, bawl
Middle English
squelen
English, today
squeal
Built from
Middle English squelen, probably from Old Norse skvala (“to squeal, bawl”), from Proto-Germanic skwel- (“to chatter, babble, scream”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European skel-, from kelh₁- (“to ring, resound, cry”). Compare Old Norse skval (“a squeal”), Swedish skvallra (“to babble, chatter, tell on”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA