scream

Pluralscreams

Formsscreams, screaming, screamed

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A loud, forceful cry of intense emotion, especially horror, fear, excitement, or anger, made as a word or a long, high-pitched sound.

   A piercing scream carried across the fairground from the roller coaster.

   His scream of fury startled everyone in the office.

   Similarshriek, screech, cry, yell, howl

   Note

   The core of the word, and the place for its history: Middle English scremen, probably a blend of Middle Dutch scremen, 'to yell', and Old Norse skræma, 'to terrify'. Both strands still show, since a scream is both a loud cry and the sound of fear. Related words elsewhere kept one strand or the other: Danish skræmme means 'to scare', West Frisian skrieme 'to weep'.

2. 2
   verbfigurativelyintransitive

   To cry out with a shrill voice; to give a sudden, sharp, loud cry, as in fright or extreme pain.

   The children scream every time the roller coaster drops.

   She screamed for help as the current dragged her under.

   Similarshout, yell, cry, shriek, screech

   Note

   The verb keeps a regular past, screamed. Screamt also turns up as a nonstandard past and participle and is best avoided in careful writing. Its subjects have never been only human: Shakespeare's Macbeth hears 'the owl scream', and Asbjørnsen's Folk and Fairy Tales (1886) has a loon that 'screamed for bad weather'. It can also introduce shouted words directly, as in started screaming, 'Run!'

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A loud cry made by many kinds of animals, especially in response to pain or fear.

   A fox's scream in the dark can sound disturbingly human.

   The wounded hare gave a scream none of the hunters expected.

   Similarshriek, screech, cry, squeal, howl

4. 4
   verbcolloquialfigurativelyintransitive

   To be a very clear sign of something; to obviously have the characteristics of.

   Everything about the hotel screams old money.

   These bold colors and loose linens scream summer.

   Similarsay, shout, evoke, signal

   Note

   A figurative use that takes a direct object, usually a quality or a quoted label: a hotel screams old money, a habit screams 'I'm obnoxious'. A favorite pattern is nothing screams X like Y, as in 'Nothing screams fall like corduroy!', where the object is often a season or a style. It is informal and emphatic, suited to conversation and lively copy rather than formal prose.

5. 5
   verbfigurativelyintransitive

   To move very quickly; to race.

   Fighter jets scream across the valley during dawn training runs.

   The sports car screamed around the final bend and crossed the line.

   Similarspeed, race, zoom, fly, rush

   Oppositecrawl

   Note

   Speed borrowed from sound: the sense pictures something moving so fast it seems to shriek, like engines, aircraft or a reckless driver. It sits most naturally as a participle after come or go plus a direction, as in came screaming down the hill, where the direction word carries much of the meaning. Speed and zoom are close synonyms, but scream adds the noise.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A form of singing in metal and screamo music using a loud, rough, distorted voice rather than the singer's normal tone.

   His scream cut through the breakdown like a chainsaw.

   She layered a clean melody over a guttural scream in the chorus.

   Note

   A technique term from metal and screamo, a genre whose very name is built on it. Here a scream is a sound the singer produces deliberately, not a cry that escapes: loud, rough and distorted, set against the singer's ordinary voice. It can be counted and possessed, so a vocalist has a scream and can layer one under a chorus. The contrast it is drawn against is clean singing.

7. 7
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A person, event, or thing that is hugely funny or entertaining.

   The whole road trip turned out to be an absolute scream.

   Her impressions of the teachers were a scream.

   Similarriot, hoot, laugh

   Oppositebore, drag

   Note

   Here the noun works inside a frame, a scream of a time or a scream of a city, where it heightens the noun that follows. Serena Mackesy, writing on Jordan in the Independent in 1994, calls Amman 'a scream of a city' because its maps are useless, which is wild and absurd rather than simply funny. Standing alone, as in an absolute scream, it leans toward hilarity.

   We had a real scream of a time at the beach.

   It was a scream of a party, loud and chaotic from start to finish.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   An exclamation mark (!), in the slang of printers and typesetters.

   Set the headline in bold and finish it with a scream.

   He marked up the proof, adding a scream after the warning line.

   Note

   Composing-room slang that names a punctuation mark after the loudest sound a voice makes: the mark that makes a line shout is called a scream. It belongs to printers, typesetters and proof markup, not to ordinary writing, so outside the trade it needs explaining. In general prose, say exclamation mark or exclamation point.

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