yowl.

1. To make a loud, prolonged cry expressing pain, grief, or distress.

2. To complain or protest noisily, with or as if with prolonged cries.

3. A loud, sustained wail or howl, often made by an animal.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• yowl in pain
• yowl through the night
• cat yowls

On the page

A cat yowled behind the locked cellar door as the footsteps approached.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror / gothic literary. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: yowl; yowls; yowled; yowled; yowling. Noun singular yowl; plural yowls. Commonness: moderately common (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Verb loud long cry of grief/pain/distress; complain/protest with or as if with yowls. Noun loud long mournful wail or howl. Forms yowled, yowling, yowls. Individual writer usefulness checked for a distinct physical, ritual, facial or acoustic function. Definitions/examples are original; genre suitability is not an inherent emotional rating. Writing functions: precise physical or ritual description, gothic scene construction. Third-person singular: yowls.