Noun: shrew
| Singular | shrew |
| Plural | shrews |
Sample Sentences
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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. [1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard:]
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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. [1959, Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz:]
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“Cease thy squalling, thou shrew!” [1970, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 88:]
Nouns inflected like shrew
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
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”). See: Middle English Nouns '
schrewe', Old English Nouns '
sċrēawa'.
Verbs referencing "shrew"
Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns
skjerd.