Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Characterized by or making a shrill grating sound or noise.
- adjective Relating to or characterized by stridor.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Making a small harsh sound; having a thin, squeaky sound; squeaky; creaking.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Making a shrill, creaking sound.
- adjective (Med.) a form of croup, or laryngitis, in children, associated with dyspnœa, occurring usually at night, and marked by crowing or stridulous breathing.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective pathology That which is relating to
stridor . - adjective Emitting a particularly
harsh orshrill sound.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In passing through some parts where a good shower of rain has fallen, the stridulous piercing notes of the cicadae are perfectly deafening; a drab-colored cricket joins the chorus with a sharp sound, which has as little modulation as the drone of a Scottish bagpipe.
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It was as if the sparkling tent of the heavens were a great bowl turned over the place, hushing its stridulous merriment, stifling its wild laughter and dry-throated feminine screams.
Trail's End George W. Ogden
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Screw your lyre up to concert pitch, and go on with your stridulous performances!
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The emancipated ghosts floated in all directions, emitting their shrill and stridulous cries in the gleaming expanse.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 12, No. 342, November 22, 1828 Various
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The dog maintained a stridulous barking; and James Polder carried her, in an ecstasy of snarling ill-temper, out.
The Three Black Pennys A Novel Joseph Hergesheimer 1917
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Whereupon Dinky-Dunk argued that we ought to forgive an invalid his stridulous preaching about bravery and manliness and his over-emphasis of fortitude, since it was plainly based on an effort to react against a constitutional weakness for which he himself couldn't be blamed.
The Prairie Wife Arthur Stringer 1912
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Amid a shower of such words, springing from men's perverse blindness to the binding propriety of keeping all propositions as to what is the best way of living in respect of place, hours, companionship, strictly relative to each individual case, Rousseau stubbornly shook the dust of the city from off his feet, and sought new life away from the stridulous hum of men.
Rousseau Morley, John 1905
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An inspection of its stridulous surface shows that Mrs. Dudgeon is not alone.
The Devil's Disciple George Bernard Shaw 1903
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When the _mbete_ (which we may translate 'priest' for want of a better word) is seized by the possession, the god within him calls out his own name in a stridulous tone, 'It is I!
The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) The Belief Among the Aborigines of Australia, the Torres Straits Islands, New Guinea and Melanesia James George Frazer 1897
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The patient may rapidly become cyanosed, the inspirations assume a noisy, stridulous character, and great distress and imminent suffocation supervene.
Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. Alexander Miles 1893
qms commented on the word stridulous
Post-dinner I'm always quite keen
My crystal should boast a bright sheen
If rubbing's assiduous
The pantry is stridulous,
To tell me they're all squeaky clean.
March 16, 2017