Word.ws English Dictionary

scowling

scowling is the present participle and gerund of scowl.

Meaning of scowl

Verb

scowl (third-person singular simple present scowls, present participle scowling, simple past and past participle scowled)

  1. (intransitive) To wrinkle the brows, as in frowning or displeasure; to put on a frowning look; to look sour, sullen, severe, or angry.
    • She scould, and frownd with froward countenaunce1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 35
  2. (broadly, intransitive) To look gloomy, dark, or threatening; to lower.
    • The scowling heavens.a. 1749 (date written), James Thomson, “Summer”, in The Seasons, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, and sold by Thomas Cadell, […], published 1768, →OCLC
  3. (transitive) To look at or repel with a scowl or a frown.
    • to scowl a rival into submission
  4. (transitive) To express by a scowl.
    • to scowl defiance

See all 7 meanings of scowl

Noun

scowling (plural scowlings)

  1. The act of giving a scowl.
    • No black scowlings — no horrid gnashing of teeth — no hideous shriekings will there appal the loving ones who watch and weep by the side of him who is dying disconsolate.1842, John Wilson, Sacred Poetry

Forms of scowling

pluralscowlings

Questions about scowling

What does scowling mean?
Scowling means the act of giving a scowl.
What is scowling the present participle and gerund of?
Scowling is the present participle and gerund of scowl.
What part of speech is scowling?
Scowling is a noun.
What is the plural of scowling?
The plural of scowling is scowlings.

Words near scowling in the dictionary

  1. scowleth
  2. scowlful
  3. scowlier
  4. scowliest
  5. scowlily
  6. scowling
  7. scowlingly
  8. scowlings
  9. scowls
  10. scowly
  11. scowman

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scowling (page history and authors); scowl (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: “scowling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scowling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.