Word.ws English Dictionary

wail on

wail on is the alternative form of whale on.

Meaning of whale on

Verb

whale on (third-person singular simple present whales on, present participle whaling on, simple past and past participle whaled on)

  1. (slang) To strike an opponent heavily and repeatedly in a fight.
    • If he had been able to break loose from his handlers and the referee, he would have jumped Paret to the floor and whaled on him there.1962, Norman Mailer, The Death of Benny Paret
  2. (slang) To beat heavily on anything.
    • The wrench wouldn’t budge, even though Tony was just whaling on it with a big old sledge hammer.

Forms of wail on

third-person singular presentwails on
present participlewailing on
past participlewailed on
pastwailed on

Questions about wail on

What is wail on the alternative form of?
Wail on is the alternative form of whale on.

Words near wail on in the dictionary

  1. Waikoloa Village
  2. Waikouaiti
  3. Waikuri
  4. Waikurian
  5. wail
  6. wail on
  7. Wailaki
  8. Wailakis
  9. waile
  10. Wailea
  11. wailed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wail on (page history and authors); whale on (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: En-au-wail on.ogg.

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