shrew

CEFRC2

/ʃɹuː/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A small animal with a long pointed nose.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    An ill-tempered, nagging woman: a scold.

Examples

  • At the edge of the road lay a dead shrew.

  • The Etruscan shrew is the smallest mammal by weight. It only weighs 1.8 grammes.

At a glance

Sits at C2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
3
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. Certain other small mammals that resemble true shrews.

  2. Any of numerous small, mouselike, chiefly nocturnal, mammals of the family Soricidae.

verb

Extra meaning

  1. To beshrew; to curse.

More examples

In context

  • His wife was a shrew with warts on her face and she spoke to him sharply when others were present, but Simcha did not complain.

  • The clerk had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife—shrill, vehement, and fluent. 'Rogue,' 'old miser,' 'old sneak,' and a great many worse names, she called him.

  • “Cease thy squalling, thou shrew!”

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The old man called his noisy neighbor a blank because she never stopped yelling.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English *schrewe, from Old English sċrēawa (“shrew”), from Proto-Germanic *skrawwaz (“thin; meagre; frail”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut; shorten; skimp”). Cognates include Old High German scrawaz (“dwarf”), Norwegian skrugg (“dwarf”).