What it means
To skrike is to cry or shriek really loud, usually in a long, high wail that carries. You hear it a lot for kids who are hurt, upset, or making a right scene, but adults can skrike too when they’re full-volume moaning. It’s a proper Northern dialect word for noise that turns every head in the street.
Usage examples
"We’d barely got in the car and he started skriking again, proper red-faced, like he’d been robbed of his last sweet."
"Our Jamie started skriking on the bus to Leeds because he dropped his bag of crisps under the seat, the lady opposite passed him a biscuit from her handbag and the noise stopped in two seconds flat."
"When the cat in our flat in Bradford gets locked out by mistake she skrikes from the back garden until the whole street wonders what we have done to her, every blooming time without fail."
"Stop skriking, man, I’ve only turned the Xbox off for ten minutes."
"That bairn were skriking in Tesco like the world had ended because his mum said no to sweets."
Where it comes from
Skrike goes back to Old Norse skríkja, meaning to shriek or screech. It hung on in Northern English dialects, especially in places shaped by Norse settlement like Yorkshire and Lancashire. That old Viking noise never fully faded out, so skrike stayed as a word for a long, piercing cry that carries.
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