One picture can hold all of screech: a thin, high sound that . Something is being forced — a throat pushed past its comfortable range, rubber dragged across a road, metal turning on rusty metal — and what comes out is narrow, loud and hard to listen to. The word does not simply mean loud. It means the sound has an edge on it, and that edge is what makes people turn their heads or cover their ears.
From the word’s history
The word is imitative in origin: its Middle English ancestor skriken (and the Old Norse skríkja beside it) was itself an attempt to copy a high sharp cry. So the sound came first and the word was shaped to match it — which is why it stretches so easily from a person to an owl to a car tyre.
這個字本身就是「學聲音」造出來的:中古英語的 skriken、古北歐語的 skríkja,都是在模仿那種又高又尖的叫聲。先有聲音,字才照著捏出來。所以它從人跳到貓頭鷹、再跳到輪胎,一點都不勉強——只要聲音像,就能用同一個字。
Wiktionary entry for 'screech' (kaikki extract supplied in this evidence packet; source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:1046348738:13912)
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,摘錄並精簡格式,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
screechnoun/skɹiːt͡ʃ/
- 1
A high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.
- 2
A harsh, shrill cry, as of one in acute pain or in fright; a shriek; a scream.
- “Before he was a twel’month ould he had a mouth full o’ great teeth; his hands wor like ’s claws, and his legs wor no thicker nor the handle of a whip, and about as straight as a rapin’ hook; to make the matther worse, he had the gut uv a cormorant, and the whinge, and the yelp, and the screech, and the yowl, was never out of his mouth.”
- 3
Newfoundland rum.
- 4
A form of home-made rye whiskey made from used oak rye barrels from a distillery.
screechverb/skɹiːt͡ʃ/
- 1
To make such a sound.
- That the night owl should screech before the noonday sun, that the bat should wheel around the bad of beauty […]
- "Have you not met them?" "No, I have met nothing but three cormorants, which were sitting on a bit of drift-wood screeching."
- 2
To travel very fast, as if making the sound of a car that is driving too fast.
- You've got to admire their balls. Real Madrid screeched after them: an entire herd, powerful and co-ordinated, salivating and breathing hard, murder in their eyes. So Barcelona moved the ball on, away from them. Forced back, it was played into Víctor Valdés, the goalkeeper, who slotted it to Carles Puyol, who gave it back again.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary,已精簡格式;依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用,改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。