a. [f. L. strīdul-us (f. strīdĕre: see STRIDENT a.) + -OUS.]
1. Emitting or producing a shrill grating sound.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, III. Comm. 48. But where they were graue and wise Counsellors, to make them garrulous, as Grashoppers are stridulous; that application holdeth not in these old men.
a. 1634. Bp. Hall, Serm. Beauty & Unity Ch., Wks. II. 369. The Church then is a Dove…, not a stridulous Jay.
1663. Boyle, Usef. Exp. Nat. Philos., II. V. xiv. 250. A servant sometimes complained to me,… that when he was put to whet a knife, that stridulous motion of the air was wont to make his gummes bleed.
1819. H. Busk, Vestriad, IV. 767. Stridulous guitar with wiry twang.
1864. G. A. Lawrence, Maurice Dering, II. 32. That … stridulous young person, who … screams when she talks, and squalls when she sings.
1878. Longf., Ovid in Exile, II. 30. Nor as before o’er the Ister Comes the Sarmatian boor driving his stridulous cart.
2. Of voice, sound: Harsh, shrill, grating.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., II. vi. 95. A small and stridulous noyse.
1778. Bp. Lowth, Transl. Isaiah, Notes 153. A feeble stridulous sound.
1779. G. White, Selborne, II. xlvi. To Barrington (1789), 252. The shrilling of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridulous,… marvellously delights some hearers.
1790. Cowper, Iliad, II. 268. In piercing accents stridulous.
1873. Morley, Rousseau, I. 229. Rousseau … sought new life away from the stridulous hum of men.
3. Path. Pertaining to or affected with stridor.
1822–9. Good, Study Med. (ed. 3), I. 609. Laryngismus stridulus. Stridulous constriction of the larynx.
1877. T. Roberts, Handbk. Med. (ed. 3), I. 360. More or less dyspnoea is usually felt, while the breathing may be stridulous.
Hence Stridulously adv.; Stridulousness.
1727. Bailey, vol. II., Stridulousness.
1831. Blackw. Mag., XXX. 397. The old dotard … is heard feebly and stridulously proclaiming, ‘Take notice! I will’ [etc.].
