1 [V] to make a long loud high cry, especially because you are sad or in pain:
The little girl was wailing miserably. * women wailing and weeping * The cat was wailing to be let out.
2 to cry or complain about sth in a loud high voice:
[Vspeech] 'It's broken,' she wailed. * [V] There's no point wailing about something that happened so long ago.
3 [V] (of things) to make a long high sound:
Ambulances raced by with sirens wailing.
wailing noun [sing.,U]:
We heard a high-pitched wailing.
noun a long loud high cry, especially one expressing pain or sadness; a sound similar to this:
a wail of anguish / despair / distress * the distant wail of sirens * The child let out a high-pitched wail.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for wail is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is wail a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, wail is tagged as verb.
Does wail appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — wail appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.