wrawl

English

Etymology

From Middle English wrawlen. Compare Danish vråle.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɹɔːl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔːl

Verb

wrawl (third-person singular simple present wrawls, present participle wrawling, simple past and past participle wrawled)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To cry like a cat; to waul.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     Some were of dogs, that barked day and night, And some of cats, that wrawling still did cry.

   • mid 15th century, Thomas Hoccleve, The Plowman's Tale, part 1:

     Such successours [of Peter] yben to bolde, In winning all ther witte thei wral.

   • 1908, Will Sparks, Philopolis, volume 3, page 139:

     The fog horns groaned and groaned again, and siren whistled and wrawled.

   • 1601, Philemon Holland, The Historie of the World, Book VII:

     Man alone, poore wretch, she hath laid all naked upon the bare earth, even on his birth-day, to cry and wraule presently from the very first houre that he is borne into this worlde.

   • 1603, Plutarch, translated by Philemon Holland, Plutarch's Moralia:

     Howbeit, crying and wrawling as like as possibly might be to an infant new come into the world.

Derived terms

• wrawling (noun)

References

• “wrawl”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.