wrawl
English edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English wrawlen. Compare Danish vråle.
Pronunciation edit
Verb edit
wrawl (third-person singular simple present wrawls, present participle wrawling, simple past and past participle wrawled)
- (obsolete, intransitive) To cry like a cat; to waul.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- Some were of dogs, that barked day and night, And some of cats, that wrawling still did cry.
- mid 15th century, Thomas Hoccleve, The Plowman's Tale, part 1:
- Such successours [of Peter] yben to bolde, In winning all ther witte thei wral.
- 1908, Will Sparks, Philopolis, volume 3, page 139:
- The fog horns groaned and groaned again, and siren whistled and wrawled.
- 1601, Philemon Holland, The Historie of the World, Book VII:
- Man alone, poore wretch, she hath laid all naked upon the bare earth, even on his birth-day, to cry and wraule presently from the very first houre that he is borne into this worlde.
- 1603, Plutarch, translated by Philemon Holland, Plutarch's Moralia:
- Howbeit, crying and wrawling as like as possibly might be to an infant new come into the world.
Derived terms edit
- wrawling (noun)
References edit
- “wrawl”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.