Word.ws English Dictionary

yarl

/jɑː(ɹ)l/US/jɑɹl/

yarl noun: a deep, guttural vocal style with affected pronunciation, characteristic of male grunge and postgrunge singers of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Noun

yarl (plural yarls)

  1. A deep, guttural vocal style with affected pronunciation, characteristic of male grunge and postgrunge singers of the 1990s and early 2000s.
    • So pontificating on how Weathereds earnest morass of block-headed rage, grunge-lite mega-riffs and singer Scott Stapp's machismo yarl' amounts to little more than Pearl Jam circa '91 for dummies is like shooting fish in a barrel.2002 January 9, Patrick Berkery, “Record Review - 1 January 09 2002”, in Creative Loafing, Atlanta
    • One of my college kids informed me that the latest acoustic grinder hunk had covered it for a soundtrack — probably with that grungy yarl that everybody ripped off from Eddie Vedder.2008, Michael J. Vaughn, Outro, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 10

Verb

yarl (third-person singular simple present yarls, present participle yarling, simple past and past participle yarled)

  1. To sing in this manner.
    • On "All Secrets Known," he yarls "fingers" into "fingerrrrrrrraaaaaaughhhhhzzzzzzz."2009 October 21, Andrew Matson, “Is there any reason to listen to the new Alice in Chains album, "Black Gives Way to Blue"?”, in The Seattle Times

Proper noun capitalized: Yarl

Yarl (plural Yarls)

  1. A surname

Forms of yarl

Noun
pluralyarls
Verb
third-person singular presentyarls
present participleyarling
past participleyarled
pastyarled
Proper noun
pluralYarls

Origin of yarl

Presumably onomatopoeic. Coined by Josh Sinder and Alex Sibbald of the band Hot Rod Lunatics.

Words that rhyme with yarl

Questions about yarl

What does yarl mean?
Yarl means a deep, guttural vocal style with affected pronunciation, characteristic of male grunge and postgrunge singers of the 1990s and early 2000s.
What part of speech is yarl?
Yarl can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce yarl?
Yarl is pronounced /jɑɹl/ (US).
What is the plural of yarl?
The plural of yarl is yarls.

Words near yarl in the dictionary

  1. yarking
  2. Yarkovsky
  3. Yarkovsky effect
  4. Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack effect
  5. yarks
  6. yarl
  7. Yarlagadda
  8. Yarlagaddas
  9. yarled
  10. yarligh
  11. yarlighs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yarl (page history and authors); Yarl (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.

Last updated:

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

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