Bawl
noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A loud, intense shouting or wailing.
"[…] that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips."
- 1 To shout or utter in a loud and intense manner. transitive
"commanders bawling"
- 2 cry loudly wordnet
- 3 To wail; to give out a blaring cry. intransitive
"children bawling"
- 4 make a raucous noise wordnet
- 5 To weep profusely. intransitive
"children bawling"
Show 1 more definition
- 6 shout loudly and without restraint wordnet
Example
More examples""Asami was bawling that you had kissed Sanada so" "I didn't bawl!""
Etymology
From Middle English baulen, from Old Norse baula (“to bellow”) and/or Medieval Latin baulō (“to bark”), both from Proto-Germanic *bau- (“to roar”), conflated with Proto-Germanic *bellaną, *ballijaną, *buljaną (“to shout, low, roar”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to sound, roar”). Cognate with Faroese belja (“to low”), Icelandic baula (“to moo, low”), Swedish böla (“to bellow, low”). More at bell.
Related phrases
More for "bawl"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.