as in harridan
a bad-tempered scolding woman
Rip Van Winkle went off into the mountains to escape his wife, a shrew who made his life miserable
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of shrew
The 2025 list of extinctions includes a bird, a shrew and a species of snail, among others.
—
Doyle Rice, USA Today, 18 Oct. 2025
The shrew is one of these mammals, according to the study.
—Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 27 Aug. 2025
The elephant shrew genus Macroscelides was the sole exception, shifting to omnivory after adopting myrmecophagy during the Eocene.
—Rupendra Brahambhatt, ArsTechnica, 20 Aug. 2025
In animal studies, TDN helped obese mice and musk shrews lose weight and become more responsive to insulin.
—Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 5 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for shrew
Doyle Rice, USA Today, 18 Oct. 2025
The shrew is one of these mammals, according to the study.
—Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 27 Aug. 2025
The elephant shrew genus Macroscelides was the sole exception, shifting to omnivory after adopting myrmecophagy during the Eocene.
—Rupendra Brahambhatt, ArsTechnica, 20 Aug. 2025
In animal studies, TDN helped obese mice and musk shrews lose weight and become more responsive to insulin.
—Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 5 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for shrew
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shrew
Noun
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Into this vacuum, a misogynistic sense of her as a harridan or a drug-using flake emerged.—
Daniel D'Addario,
Variety,
3 Feb. 2026
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Given its plotting, Brooks’s movie could easily have made Iris into a harridan and Isaac into a sociopathic rogue.—
Graham Hillard,
The Washington Examiner,
15 Aug. 2025
Noun
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Rather than returning to a patient Penelope, Rip has fled the termagant Dame Van Winkle.—
John Swansburg,
The Atlantic,
10 Oct. 2025
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But the film belongs to Moreno, clearly relishing the chance to play an unapologetic termagant.—
David Rooney,
The Hollywood Reporter,
13 Mar. 2022
Noun
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Robin Hood was portrayed as a fox, Little John was depicted as a bear, Friar Tuck as a badger, Prince John as a lion, the sheriff of Nottingham as a wolf and Maid Marian as a vixen.—
Angelique Jackson,
Variety,
6 Mar. 2026
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But through no fault of the actress, the film starts to sag as Erika morphs from intoxicating vixen to deceitfully manipulative monster.—
David Rooney,
HollywoodReporter,
24 Jan. 2026
Noun
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There was misogyny, of course: women are harpies or one of the boys.—
Akhil Sharma,
New Yorker,
28 Jan. 2026
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In the right-wing imagination, these women are acting like harpies — an epithet often seen online — when they’re supposed to be helpmeets.—
Michelle Goldberg,
Mercury News,
20 Jan. 2026
Noun
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Stick with us throughout the night and come back Monday morning for a dispatch from Schulman, plus analysis from Brody and his fellow movie critic Justin Chang.—
The New Yorker,
New Yorker,
15 Mar. 2026
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Some critics have pointed toward potential issues in the event of rain, humidity, sand or fog.—
Lesley Stahl,
CBS News,
15 Mar. 2026
Noun
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Skin is important here, not just its color but its texture as Josephine, for example, goes from elegant sophisticate to sweaty, sunburned, frizzy virago increasingly swollen with pregnancy and angry mosquito bites.—
Jessica Kiang,
Variety,
25 Aug. 2023
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Meredith is a stereotypical virago updated with modern libertarian notions.—
Charles McNulty,
Los Angeles Times,
5 July 2023
Noun
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Certainly, the mere discussion of police killing unarmed civilians ought to be enough to fill an audience with fury, but the movie ends up with too sanitized and too academic an approach to afford viewers the room for these emotions.—
Siddhant Adlakha,
Variety,
14 Mar. 2026
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January's wave of protests in Iran was sparked by economic discontent and eventually widened to encompass more generalized fury over the regime's system of repression.—
NBC News,
NBC news,
13 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Shrew.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/shrew. Accessed 16 Mar. 2026.
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