bawl

UK/bɔːl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/boːl/

bawl verb: to shout or utter in a loud and intense manner.

Image: U.S. Navy photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

bawl (third-person singular simple present bawls, present participle bawling, simple past and past participle bawled)

(transitive) To shout or utter in a loud and intense manner.
- commanders bawling
- He jumped upon the saddle with another yell as he pushed the machine before him, and the next instant was whirling down the thoroughfare with the rapidity of an express train, bawling for people to "Stand clear!"1900, T. Jenkins Hains, Mr. Trunnell, Mate of the Ship "Pirate"
(intransitive) To wail; to give out a blaring cry.
- children bawling
- cattle bawling
(intransitive) To weep profusely.
- children bawling
- mourners bawling

Noun

bawl (plural bawls)

A loud, intense shouting or wailing.
- […] that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips.1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard

bawl meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

bawl in Malayalam

yell, shout, roar: ആക്രോശിക്കുക, ഗർജ്ജിക്കുക, നർദ്ദിക്കുക, അലറുക, കതറുക, കൂവിടുക
weep, cry, sob: കരയുക, നിലവിളിക്കുക, തേങ്ങിക്കരയുക, മുറവിളികൂട്ടുക, ഏങ്ങുക, വിമ്മുക
yell, shout, roar: കൂക്കുവിളി, കൂകിവിളിച്ചാർക്കൽ, ഉറക്കെപ്പറയൽ, പ്രോദ്ഘോഷണം, ആർപ്പുവിളി, അലർച്ച

bawl in Kannada

ಬೊಬ್ಬೆ, ಆರು, ಅರಚು, ಬೊಬ್ಬೆಹಾಕು, ಗಟ್ಟಿಯಾಗಿ ಕಿರಿಚು

Examples of bawl in a sentence

"She didn't get there?" he bawled into her frightened face1930, Dashiell Hammet, The Maltese Falcon, New York, N.Y.; London: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC, page 140:
Why did you bawl out just as I was aiming?1859, George Meredith, chapter 5, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall...

All 25 example sentences with bawl

Forms of bawl

Verb
third-person singular present	bawls
present participle	bawling
past participle	bawled
past	bawled
Noun
plural	bawls

Past tense of bawl: bawled

Origin of bawl

From Middle English baulen, from Old Norse baula (“to bellow”) and/or Medieval Latin baulō (“to bark”), both from Proto-Germanic *bau- (“to roar”), conflated with Proto-Germanic *bellaną, *ballijaną, *buljaną (“to shout, low, roar”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to sound, roar”). Cognate with Faroese belja (“to low”), Icelandic baula (“to moo, low”), Swedish böla (“to bellow, low”). More at bell.

Words formed from bawl

Words that rhyme with bawl

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bawl

What does bawl mean?: Bawl means to shout or utter in a loud and intense manner.
What is bawl in Urdu?: Bawl in Urdu is ہانکنا (hāṅknā). See Bawl meaning in Urdu.
How do you use bawl in a sentence?: "She didn't get there?" he bawled into her frightened face
What part of speech is bawl?: Bawl can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce bawl?: Bawl is pronounced /bɔːl/ (UK).
What is the past tense of bawl?: The past tense of bawl is bawled.

Words near bawl in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: bawl (page history and authors); ہانکنا (Urdu) (page history and authors); bawl (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bawl (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bawl (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vininn126-bawl.wav, En-au-ball.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bawl.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bawl. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.