Word.ws English Dictionary

make moan

make moan verb: to lament, complain.

Verb

make moan (third-person singular simple present makes moan, present participle making moan, simple past and past participle made moan)

  1. (Scotland, poetic) To lament, complain.
    • when, too late awaking, well they kent / That their fayre guest was gone, they both begonne / To make exceeding mone, as they had been undonne.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • These yellow cowslip cheeks / Are gone, are gone. Lovers, make moan.c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, A Midsommer Nights Dreame. […] (First Quarto), London: […] [Richard Bradock] for Thomas Fisher, […], published 1600, →OCLC, (please specify the act...
  2. (poetic) To moan, to make a moaning sound.
    • I made a garland for her head, / And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; / She looked at me as she did love, / And made sweet moan.1819, John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad
    • In the bleak mid-winter / Frosty wind made moan, / Earth stood hard as iron, / Water like a stone […]1872, Christina Rossetti, In the Bleak Midwinter

Forms of make moan

third-person singular presentmakes moan
present participlemaking moan
past participlemade moan
pastmade moan

Questions about make moan

What does make moan mean?
Make moan means to lament, complain.
What part of speech is make moan?
Make moan is a verb.
What is the past tense of make moan?
The past tense of make moan is made moan.

Words near make moan in the dictionary

  1. make mention of
  2. make merry
  3. make mileage out of
  4. make mincemeat of
  5. make mincemeat out of
  6. make moan
  7. make mockery of
  8. make money
  9. make mouths
  10. make much
  11. make muffins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make moan (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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