Wauls

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To emit a loud, mournful cry, often expressing pain or distress
2. To produce a prolonged, high-pitched sound that signals sorrow or discomfort
3. To give out a noisy and sorrowful sound indicative of suffering or grief

Etymology: "Wauls" is the third-person singular present form of "waul," so it simply means that someone or something cries out mournfully, as a cat does on a fence at night. The verb "waul" goes back to Middle English "wraulen" or "wrawlen," meaning to cry like a cat or to roar. That Middle English root has relatives in the Scandinavian languages, where Danish "vræle" and Swedish "vråla" mean to bellow, roar, howl or yell. The shared sense of a loud, raw noun-free cry links the English verb to its northern cousins, and the pairing of "waul" with "wrawl" in older English shows how the cry itself was imitated in several spellings.

Synonyms: wail, howl, yowl