shrill

The woods rang with shrill cries of the birds.

"It is Miss Halliday!" cried the house-maid, as she opened the door. "And oh my," she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, "how bad she do look!" … "Oh, don't she look white!" cried a shrill girl with a baby in her arms.

Rather than shrill, feisty whites tasting of grass, green beans, gooseberry or pipi de chat (the somehow more polite French term for cat's pee), [Didier] Dagueneau's Sauvignons were statuesque, beautifully balanced wines with flavors reminiscent of citrus zests, apricot, fig, passion fruit and minerals.

The clerk had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife, shrill, vehement, and fluent.