Word.ws English Dictionary

howling

/ˈhaʊlɪŋ/

howling noun: the act of producing howls. Also the present participle and gerund of howl.

Noun

howling (plural howlings)

  1. The act of producing howls.
    • The howling of wolves is haunting at night.

Adjective

howling (not comparable)

  1. That howls.
    • howling wind
    • A few minutes later a howling mob was at the door.1888, William Fraser Rae, A Modern Brigand
  2. That causes one to howl or feel like howling; deeply distressing.
    • Ah! the death of the poor, the empty entrails, howling hunger, the animal appetite that leads one with chattering teeth to fill one's stomach with beastly refuse in this great Paris, so bright and golden!1877, Émile Zola, L'Assommoir
    • Some agency must control the allocation of frequencies or all our airways would be a howling chaos: but there is no rational justification for the kind of regulation that the Federal Communications Commission proposes for our industry.1966, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Regulation of Community Antenna Television, page 272
  3. (colloquial) Used as an intensifier
    • Those were days that I had success, for I could see it, and feel it, and taste it, and my patrons caught the contagion and we had a howling success .1900, “Superstition and Success in the Practise of Medicin. A Breezy Chapter From a Young Contemporary”, in The Medical World, volume 18, page 446
    • Boy, what a howling triumph if we should find our way out of here and go walking into Stark House by night !2022, Percy Keese Fitzhugh, The Doom of Stark House

Proper noun capitalized: Howling

Howling

  1. A surname originating as a patronymic.

Also used as

howling is also the present participle and gerund of howl.

howling meaning in Arabic

howling in Arabic

act of producing howls
عُوَاء ʕuwāʔ

Examples of howling in a sentence

  • We have already seen in Chapter I how man stepped upwards from the level of a howling brute to the higher level of an articulate being, and thence to the still higher level of a singing creature.1916, Charles Villiers Stanford, Cecil Forsyth, A History of Music, page 202:
  • It consisted of marching on to College green or St Stephen's green on a day when there was a howling gale and the wind was blowing about us –I am sure hon.1989, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)., page 189:
  • A pervasive sense of optimism led settlers in southern New Zealand to transform their properites from a 'howling wilderness' to a humanised rural landscape.2013, Peter Holland, A Home in the Howling Wilderness:
  • The majority of your audience comes to your tale with one hopeful expectation: Tell me a howling good story.2023, Wulf Moon, How to Write a Howling Good Story, page 1:

All 40 example sentences with howling

Forms of howling

pluralhowlings

Origin of howling

From Middle English howlynge, howelynge, equivalent to howl + -ing (gerund suffix).

From Middle English howlinge, howlynge, equivalent to howl + -ing (present participle ending).

From a medieval diminutive of the given name Hugh.

Words formed from howling

Phrases with howling

Words that rhyme with howling

Questions about howling

What does howling mean?
Howling means the act of producing howls.
What is howling in Arabic?
Howling in Arabic is عُوَاء (ʕuwāʔ). See Howling meaning in Arabic.
How do you use howling in a sentence?
We have already seen in Chapter I how man stepped upwards from the level of a howling brute to the higher level of an articulate being, and thence to the still higher level of a singing creature.
What part of speech is howling?
Howling can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce howling?
Howling is pronounced /ˈhaʊlɪŋ/.
What is the plural of howling?
The plural of howling is howlings.

Words near howling in the dictionary

  1. Howlett
  2. Howley
  3. Howleys
  4. Howlin
  5. howlin'
  6. howling
  7. howling at the moon
  8. howling down
  9. howling jackass
  10. howling jackasses
  11. howling on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: howling (page history and authors); Howling (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-AnotherFriendlyHuman-howling.wav.

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