Word.ws English Dictionary

yowl

/jaʊl/

yowl noun: a prolonged, loud cry, like the sound of an animal; a wail; a howl.

Noun

yowl (plural yowls)

  1. A prolonged, loud cry, like the sound of an animal; a wail; a howl.
    • “Before he was a twel’month ould he had a mouth full o’ great teeth; his hands wor like ’s claws, and his legs wor no thicker nor the handle of a whip, and about as straight as a rapin’ hook; to make the matther worse, he had the gut uv a cormorant, and the whinge, and the yelp, and the screech...1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 522

Verb

yowl (third-person singular simple present yowls, present participle yowling, simple past and past participle yowled)

  1. (intransitive) Utter a yowl.
  2. (transitive) Express by yowling; utter with a yowl.

yowl meaning in Tamil and Urdu

yowl in Tamil

ஊளை, ஊளையிடு, கூக்குரல்

yowl in Urdu

بھیڑئیے, کتے کی چیخ, لمبی دل بھری چیخ

Forms of yowl

Noun
pluralyowls
Verb
third-person singular presentyowls
present participleyowling
past participleyowled
pastyowled

Origin of yowl

From Middle English youlen, goulen, from Old Norse gaula (“to low, bellow, howl, scream”), related to Icelandic gaula (“to yell, howl, roar”), Faroese geyla (“to bawl, squall, shout, yell, bellow”), Norwegian gaule (“to roar, howl, whine, weep noisily”), dialectal Swedish gjöla, Scots gowl (“to howl, yell, roar”), Shetlandic Scots gjol. Initial y- possibly influenced by Middle English yollen, yellen (“to yell”).

Words formed from yowl

Words that rhyme with yowl

15 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about yowl

What does yowl mean?
Yowl means a prolonged, loud cry, like the sound of an animal; a wail; a howl.
What is yowl in Tamil?
Yowl in Tamil is ஊளை, ஊளையிடு, கூக்குரல். See Yowl meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is yowl?
Yowl can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce yowl?
Yowl is pronounced /jaʊl/.
What is the plural of yowl?
The plural of yowl is yowls.

Words near yowl in the dictionary

  1. Yowells
  2. yowes
  3. yowie
  4. Yowie Bay
  5. yowies
  6. yowl
  7. yowled
  8. yowler
  9. yowlers
  10. yowley
  11. yowleys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yowl (page history and authors); yowl (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); yowl (Urdu Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-yowl.wav.

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