different between jolt vs screech

English

Etymology

Perhaps from Middle English jollen (“to stagger, knock, batter”), itself perhaps a variant of Middle English chollen (“to strike, juggle, do tricks”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d??lt/, IPA^(key): /d???lt/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /d?o?lt/
• Rhymes: -?lt, -??lt

Verb

jolt (third-person singular simple present jolts, present participle jolting, simple past and past participle jolted)

1. (transitive) To push or shake abruptly and roughly.

   The bus jolted its passengers at every turn.

2. (transitive) To knock sharply
3. (transitive) To shock (someone) into taking action or being alert

   I jolted her out of complacency.

4. (transitive) To shock emotionally.

   Her untimely death jolted us all.

5. (intransitive) To shake; to move with a series of jerks.

   The car jolted along the stony path.

Derived terms

• jolter
• jolthead
• jolting
• joltproof
• jolty

Translations

Noun

jolt (plural jolts)

1. An act of jolting.
2. A surprise or shock.
3. (slang) A long prison sentence.
4. (slang) A narcotic injection.

Coordinate terms

• (prison sentence): bit

Translations

References

English

Etymology

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 *skr?kijan? (compare Icelandic skríkja, Old Saxon scric?n, Danish skrige, Swedish skrika), derivative of *skr?han? (compare Middle Dutch schriën, German schreien, Low German dial. schrien, schriegen), ultimately of imitative origin.

Pronunciation

• enPR: skr?ch, IPA^(key): /sk?i?t?/
  • (UK) IPA^(key): [sk?i?t?]
  • (US) IPA^(key): [sk?it?]
• Rhymes: -i?t?

Noun

screech (countable and uncountable, plural screeches)

1. A high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.
2. A harsh, shrill cry, as of one in acute pain or in fright; a shriek; a scream.
   • 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, volume 3, chapter 6

     That the night owl should sreech before the noonday sun, that the bat should wheel around the bad of beauty [...]

3. (Newfoundlander, uncountable) Newfoundland rum.
4. A form of home-made rye whiskey made from used oak rye barrels from a distillery.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

screech (third-person singular simple present screeches, present participle screeching, simple past and past participle screeched)

1. To make such a sound.
2. (intransitive, figuratively) to travel very fast, as if making the sounds of brakes being released

Translations

Anagrams

• creches, crèches