Skip to main content
PlainSpell

shriek

/ʃɹiːk/noun, verb

shriek is spelled S-H-R-I-E-K. The wrong spelling people search most is shreak: about 360 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 4 in 10 of all searches for the word. Shriek is a noun meaning “A sharp, shrill outcry or scream; a shrill wild cry caused by sudden or extreme terror, pain, or the like”. The plural of shriek is shrieks.

How many letters and syllables are in shriek?

Letters6: S-H-R-I-E-K
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writingabout once in every 2 million words; the 38,863rd most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, shreak, about 360 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell shriek?

Shriek is spelled S-H-R-I-E-K. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 4 in 10 of the searches for shriek in either form.

shriekthe right spelling570 searches a month
shreake in place of i, a in place of e360 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is shriek?

Shriek appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 38,863rd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce shriek?

  • /ʃɹiːk/

Shriek has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-shriek.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with shriek?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as shriek.

Spelled with the same letters in another order: shrike.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of shriek

  • shrieks plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • shrieking participle, present
  • shrieked participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does shriek mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    A sharp, shrill outcry or scream; a shrill wild cry caused by sudden or extreme terror, pain, or the like.

  2. 2

    UKslangAn exclamation mark.

verb

  1. 1

    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.

  2. 2

    To utter sharply and shrilly; to utter in or with a shriek or shrieks.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Shriek in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchhurlement (a sharp, shrill outcry or scream), crier (to utter a loud, sharp, shrill sound or cry)
GermanKreischen (a sharp, shrill outcry or scream), kreischen (to utter a loud, sharp, shrill sound or cry)
Portugueseguincho (a sharp, shrill outcry or scream), guinchar (to utter a loud, sharp, shrill sound or cry)
Spanishalarido, chillido (a sharp, shrill outcry or scream), chillar (to utter a loud, sharp, shrill sound or cry)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does shriek come from?

From obsolete shrick (1567), shreke, variants of earlier screak, skricke (before 1500), from Middle English scrycke, from a North Germanic/Scandinavian language (compare Swedish skrika, Danish skrige, Icelandic skríkja), from Proto-Germanic *skrīkijaną, *skrik- (compare English screech). More at screech.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after shriek