| / English Dictionary |
WAILING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Loud cries made while weeping
Synonyms:
bawling; wailing
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("wailing" is a kind of...):
crying; tears; weeping (the process of shedding tears (usually accompanied by sobs or other inarticulate sounds))
Derivation:
wail (emit long loud cries)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Vocally expressing grief or sorrow or resembling such expression
Example:
tangle her desires with wailful sonnets
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
sorrowful (experiencing or marked by or expressing sorrow especially that associated with irreparable loss)
III. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb wail
Context examples:
I pulled off my shoes and stockings, and, wailing two or three hundred yards, I found the object to approach nearer by force of the tide; and then plainly saw it to be a real boat, which I supposed might by some tempest have been driven from a ship.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
So for five long minutes the gallant horsemen of Spain and of France strove ever and again to force a passage, until the wailing note of a bugle called them back, and they rode slowly out of bow-shot, leaving their best and their bravest in the ghastly, blood-mottled heap behind them.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Leach could have killed him, but, having evidently filled the measure of his vengeance, he drew away from his prostrate foe, who was whimpering and wailing in a puppyish sort of way, and walked forward.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
So terrible was his appearance that Spitz was forced to forego disciplining him; but to cover his own discomfiture he turned upon the inoffensive and wailing Billee and drove him to the confines of the camp.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
There was no whimpering nor wailing.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
"Didn't you know water would be the end of me?" asked the Witch, in a wailing, despairing voice.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
Sitting on the floor with one boot on, Amy began to cry and Meg to reason with her, when Laurie called from below, and the two girls hurried down, leaving their sister wailing.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
It might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
A poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken windows, no fire, ragged bedclothes, a sick mother, wailing baby, and a group of pale, hungry children cuddled under one old quilt, trying to keep warm.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
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