eeeee.

n.  sensual pleasure: “no eeeee’s of pleasure but their own” (Toni Morrison, Love).

<[He] set his teeth very softly in the tender flesh at the side of my neck.  “Eeeee,” I said, and shivered uncontrollably.  —Diana Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn.>

n.  the creaking of an old wooden canal boat, as described in The Magic Escapes by Tony Abbott.


n.  the cry of the tenor horn.

<[E]verything came out of the horn, no more phrases, just cries, cries ... “EEEEE!”  —Jack Kerouac, On the Road.>

n.  the final cry of the cicada, beseeching the tide to come in but saying “nothing about the spirit land, nothing about what is going to happen to you after you die,” from an Australian Aboriginal myth discussed in Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge by Howard Morphy.

<Garanyirrnyirr [cicada] is a very strange animal.  He yells out “eeeee,” and then dies.  Very hard, he takes his own life.  He sings out for the salt water to come in, and then he dies, for the tide to come in, and when it comes in he dies.  —Howard Morphy, Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge.>

n.  the screech of someone who had the air knocked out of his lungs.

<The ball got through the corner of the screen and caught him in the ribs.  You could hear him go, “EEEEE!”  It was like all his breath left him.  —Pete Diprimio, Hoosier Hitmen: Indiana University Baseball.>

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