screech
n.n. a very loud, high-pitched, and unpleasant sound. You might hear this from a bird, a car, or a person screaming.
n. a high-pitched, shrill, and often unpleasant sound. Frequently used to describe the noise made by birds or the mechanical sound of a vehicle.
The loud screech of the brakes made everyone jump.
A sudden screech from the old wooden floor signaled that the house was settling into the cold winter night.
The night was broken only by the occasional screech of an owl or the distant howl of a wolf, creating an atmosphere of eerie silence.
1602; altered with expressive vowel lengthening from earlier skrech (1577), variant of obsolete scritch, from Middle English skriken, shrichen, schrichen (1250), from Old English (attested as scriccettan) and Old Norse skríkja, both from Proto-Germanic skrīkijaną (compare Icelandic skríkja, Old Saxon scricōn, Danish skrige, Swedish skrika), derivative of skrīhaną (compare Middle Dutch schriën, German schreien, Low German dial. schrien, schriegen), ultimately of imitative origin.