How to Use trill in a Sentence

trill

1 of 2 noun
  • She pronounces her r's with a trill.
  • Kelly does the trills and the runs and all this kind of stuff.
    — Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times, 31 Mar. 2023
  • The ball pings against the sides of the machine and bells trill and lights flash.
    — Christian Livermore, Longreads, 11 Oct. 2022
  • Whales sing, toadfish hum, cod grunt, and bearded seals trill.
    — Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 13 June 2022
  • The music flows out with ease—quick trills, raspy runs, then long, aching holds that stretch just to the edge of breaking.
    — Arati Menon, Condé Nast Traveler, 7 June 2026
  • The bird responds by opening its beak and releasing the liquid trill of a morning song.
    — Lizzie Pook, Condé Nast Traveler, 7 Sep. 2022
  • Lush cellos and mournful piano trills coexist with the overall less-is-more sound.
    — Jae-Ha Kim, Rolling Stone, 10 Sep. 2025
  • Then, Swift entered the chat, demonstrating a popular vocal warm-up known as a lip trill.
    — Skyler Caruso, People.com, 21 Aug. 2025
  • Shawn Mendes, the 22-year-old Canadian folk-pop singer with the velour trill, is a bard of puppy love.
    — Robyn Bahr, Billboard, 23 Nov. 2020
  • The only honking is that of Canadian geese, mixed with the trill of bird calls and patter of the garden fountain.
    — Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times, 17 May 2023
  • Birds can make an array of noises, from elegant trills to ear-piercing squawks—and nearly everything in between.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Sep. 2023
  • Males are slightly smaller than females and are known for dramatic courtship displays involving rapid wing beats and vocal trills.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 28 June 2025
  • When Jansen got to Lucas Oil for the Lions' preseason game, the raspy trill was still there.
    — The Indianapolis Star, 26 Oct. 2022
  • Male toads will gather in shallow water and call females with a high, clear trill — almost like a ringing noise — that lasts up to 30 seconds.
    — Dallas News, 2 May 2022
  • The metallic poison frog, active during daytime hours, has a long-lasting trill, or call, of 21–45 notes.
    — Lauren Liebhaber, Miami Herald, 25 Apr. 2025
  • There, the pair of college students would listen to the trills of saxophones and shake hands with musicians, sometimes giving band members rides to gigs.
    — Kansas City Star, 7 May 2026
  • The temperature plunges; Reilly’s trills harden into an Old World dirge.
    — Brad Shoup, Pitchfork, 24 Jan. 2026
  • The bandwidth of the trill at the end of the sparrows’ song is also key to communicating physical fitness to potential mates or rivals.
    — Eva Botkin-Kowacki, The Christian Science Monitor, 25 Sep. 2020
  • From the sixteenth century through the early twentieth, their coloratura runs and trills touched the frescoed ceilings of the great basilicas.
    — Dan Piepenbring, Harpers Magazine, 27 Jan. 2026
  • Acoustic guitars are now accented with booming drums and digital trills, as hip-hop and pop’s influence infiltrates country.
    — Vulture Editors, Vulture, 27 June 2025
  • Campers venture out into the untrammeled waters for days without seeing another person or hearing anything but the soprano trill of a loon.
    — Jack Brook, The Christian Science Monitor, 2 July 2020
  • Great Hall to a cheering audience, who watched her trill some crystal-clear notes on a similar flute before bending over and busting out a mini-twerk to the crowd’s delight.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 30 Sep. 2022
  • What Lynn does to capture the listener by the throat, from its first words, is lower her already-famous high trill by an octave and find the metaphorical heart of a place that will never be the same.
    — A.d. Amorosi, Variety, 4 Oct. 2022
  • Most of us know the trills and thrills of Lalo Schifrin’s original score, which remains the most exciting theme tune ever composed for TV.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 14 July 2023
  • And while there's plenty of covetable items in that veritable sea of deals, there's another, more under the radar sale happening that is sure to tempt anyone who gets a trill from seeing the savings stack up.
    — Lauren Hubbard, Town & Country, 19 July 2023
  • Against a long and attenuated trill of the viola, Mehretu’s backgrounds become a lurid green or mysterious blue and the black lines of the paintings start to look more querulous.
    — Jason Farago, New York Times, 28 Sep. 2022
  • Gilda displays every vocal artifice available to a soprano — impressively, even a real trill.
    — Dallas News, 10 Oct. 2022
  • Mornings start with the trill of birdsong as this region is well known for its abundant avian life—indeed, Barú is home to a biodiverse ecosystem with one of the largest populations of butterflies and bird species in the world.
    — Katie Kelly Bell, Forbes.com, 7 May 2025
  • The book includes a fountain of birds based on another design from Hero’s Pneumatica, with the intermittent action of a network of siphons causing the birds to flutter and trill.
    — Jessica Riskin, The New York Review of Books, 23 Feb. 2021
  • Domenica Bongiovanni As Jordin Sparks sang the familiar trills of the national anthem, a series of loud pops emanated from the east.
    — Cindi Andrews, IndyStar, 25 May 2026

trill

2 of 2 verb
  • Is that panic, when the flute trills high?
    — Linnie Greene, Pitchfork, 17 Feb. 2026
  • Femme tunes trilled in the background.
    — Kansas City Star, 29 May 2026
  • Sounds of loud trilling shouts after silent hunts, and singing.
    — Literary Hub, 3 Nov. 2025
  • Any minute now, the mockingbird will trill at me to go to bed.
    — Edan Lepucki, The Atlantic, 12 July 2024
  • Keep pounding, trilling, or skipping along waves of notes, and your hands take flight.
    — Justin Davidson, Vulture, 3 Feb. 2025
  • At dawn, cooing doves and trilling Eurasian blackbirds woke me.
    — Nina Burleigh, New York Times, 21 May 2024
  • My mother trilled vapidly over these mundane facts.
    — Madhuri Vijay, New Yorker, 16 Nov. 2025
  • Down the hall from the hedgehog, staff fed trilling birds — no bigger than the palm of a hand — with tweezers and syringes.
    — Jess McHugh, Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2024
  • Her soft-focus voice floats over trilling mandolin picking and reserved fiddle.
    — Jessica Nicholson, Billboard, 10 Mar. 2025
  • Alára means ‘wondrous performer, one who trills endlessly’ in Yoruba.
    — Helen Jennings, Vogue, 21 June 2023
  • During her performance, Bell trilled through possible name changes for actors.
    — Itzel Luna, Los Angeles Times, 2 Mar. 2026
  • Sardi’s, so synonymous with that time on Broadway, is bathed in a golden glow, the piano trilling through its empty space.
    — Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline, 18 Feb. 2025
  • Musselwhite punctuated the music with his harmonica trills and moans while his right knee bounced in time with the rhythms.
    — Kevin McKeough, Chicago Tribune, 7 June 2026
  • Serene spa music, a blend of classical piano and loudly chirping birds, trilled in the background as the machine sloshed and gurgled.
    — Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times, 6 Apr. 2026
  • The blast furnace of volcanoes has fallen silent, replaced by a cheery chorus of birdsong trilling from the branches and echoing through a garden of stone.
    — Roger Naylor, The Arizona Republic, 11 Apr. 2024
  • The blast furnace of volcanoes has fallen silent, replaced by birdsong trilling from the branches and echoing through a garden of exotic stone.
    — Roger Naylor, AZCentral.com, 29 Aug. 2025
  • There’ll probably be some cowbells, and there might be someone trilling in sultry Portuguese or a burst of wordless, stoic alpha-male grunts.
    — Kieran Press-Reynolds, Pitchfork, 26 Mar. 2025
  • Spanish vowels overlap with Sindarin ones, and Spanish speakers already can trill their Rs with the best of elves.
    — Los Angeles Times, 6 Feb. 2023
  • The temperature plunges; Reilly’s trills harden into an Old World dirge.
    — Brad Shoup, Pitchfork, 24 Jan. 2026
  • Percussive footwork was multiplied in tight unison, groups moved in handsome lines and circles, castanets trilled and soloists broke out in displays of expertise.
    — Brian Seibert, New York Times, 18 Mar. 2024
  • The Volta Associates can be heard counting, trilling the letter R, and reciting Shakespeare.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 30 Apr. 2018
  • In a now-viral clip, Carpenter overheard someone from the crowd trilling during her set for Weekend 1 and asked if the audience member was yodeling.
    — Natalie Oganesyan, Deadline, 11 Apr. 2026
  • Expect to marvel at saddles blanketed in blueberries and multi-hued wildflowers, marmots trilling their warnings, ibex perched on rocky spines, and neon critters that wiggle and hop underfoot.
    — Wendy Altschuler, Forbes.com, 16 Aug. 2025
  • Albarn, working with Adele producer Greg Kurstin, fills the record with trilling steel drums, baleful mariachi horns, even a playful riff on the iPhone’s default ringtone.
    — Clayton Purdom, Rolling Stone, 21 Feb. 2023
  • In the band’s 50-minute set on the main stage on Saturday, at times Nowell was a carbon copy of his father, jumping from a death metal-like growl into his father’s trilling higher falsetto.
    — Tomás Mier, Rolling Stone, 14 Apr. 2024
  • Birds trilled, their song drowned periodically by planes roaring toward Reagan National Airport.
    — Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post, 13 Aug. 2023
  • Sounds that change in loudness rapidly — Rogers demonstrated this by imitating a trilling sound similar to a jackhammer — are particularly troublesome.
    — Gabe Bullard, Washington Post, 2 Nov. 2023
  • McGill’s superbly nuanced calls, runs, and trills elicited commentary from a second audience, perched in the trees above—a colloquium of finches, towhees, titmice, kingbirds, juncos, and Eurasian collared doves.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 29 June 2026
  • Rock Harbor to Daisy Farm Campground This trail almost entirely follows the coast for 7 miles, with a soundtrack of lapping waves, trilling loons, and the occasional outboard motor.
    — Robert Annis, Midwest Living, 7 June 2026
  • About 40 minutes away, real birds melodiously chirped and trilled outside its sister hotel, Es Figueral Nou, an 18th-century finca and former fig plantation set among vast agricultural fields.
    — Norma Meyer, Oc Register, 27 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'trill.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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