Word.ws English Dictionary

keening

keening adjective: sharp, shrill, especially of a sound. Also the present participle and gerund of keen.

Adjective

keening (not comparable)

  1. Sharp, shrill, especially of a sound.
    • The keening sound of a dentist's drill sets my teeth on edge.
    • When Leo is happy, he bursts out in riffs of scat singing, making up little melodies as he goes. When he’s basically content but feeling restless, he makes a sound like tikka, tikka, tikka. If he’s more anxious than that, he makes a sound like Jimmy Durante: “Atch-cha-cha!” A sudden burst of...2015, Steve Silberman, chapter 2, in Megan Newman, editor, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, New York: Avery, →ISBN, page 46

Noun

keening (countable and uncountable, plural keenings)

  1. Intense mournful wailing after a death, often at a funeral or wake.
    • Keening. I remember keening that seemed to go on all through the night: shrill, sharp, shiny, needles of sound piercing cleanly and deeply to let the anguish in, not out.1988, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions, Faber & Faber Limited (2021), page 85
  2. (broadly) An unpleasant wailing sound.

Also used as

keening is also the present participle and gerund of keen.

Examples of keening in a sentence

  • Whoop!” When he’s tired, he makes a soft keening noise.2015, Steve Silberman, chapter 2, in Megan Newman, editor, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, New York...
  • As Black Sabbath’s doomsayer-in-chief, Osbourne could summon a true sense of terror in his keening cries in a way that heightened the band’s muscular dirges.2025 July 22, Kory Grow, “Ozzy Osbourne obituary: The Godfather of Heavy Metal who changed the world”, in Rolling Stone:

Forms of keening

pluralkeenings

Origin of keening

From keen + -ing, from Irish caoin.

Questions about keening

What does keening mean?
Keening means sharp, shrill, especially of a sound.
How do you use keening in a sentence?
Whoop!” When he’s tired, he makes a soft keening noise.
What part of speech is keening?
Keening can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near keening in the dictionary

  1. keenest
  2. keeneth
  3. Keeney
  4. Keeneys
  5. Keeneyville
  6. keening
  7. keenings
  8. keenish
  9. keenly
  10. keenness
  11. keennesses

Source and license

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