Growl
noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A deep, rumbling, threatening sound made in the throat by an animal.
"Hardly anything is more intensely disagreeable to one walking along the street, than to hear near his path a low savage growl—the expression of a surly dog's opinion and purpose."
- 2 the sound of growling (as made by animals) wordnet
- 3 A similar sound made by a human. broadly
- 4 The rumbling sound made by a human's hungry stomach. broadly
"Riding down the main thoroughfare, the growl of his stomach taints the soothing jazz playing on the radio."
- 5 An aggressive grumbling. broadly
"The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's-buff."
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- 6 A low-pitched rumbling sound produced with a wind instrument. broadly
"The growl effect comes from fitting a small straight mute—a cornet mute for trumpet and a trumpet mute for trombone—covering the instrument's bell with a rubber plunger, the kind used by plumbers, and moving it in and out to affect the tone."
- 7 Death growl broadly
- 1 To utter a deep guttural sound, as an angry animal; to give forth an angry, grumbling sound. intransitive
"The dog growled at me as I walked past."
- 2 to utter or emit low dull rumbling sounds wordnet
- 3 Of a wind instrument: to produce a low-pitched rumbling sound. intransitive
"And he is bending in the wind, scooping pitch, growling. […] He plays his false fingers. Chokes the trumpet. He is naked. This is naked jazz. O-bop-she-bam. Never lying. Telling it like it is."
- 4 To send a user a message via the Growl software library. intransitive
- 5 To express (something) by growling. transitive
"The old man growled his displeasure at the postman."
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- 6 To play a wind instrument in a way that produces a low-pitched rumbling sound. transitive
"[…] John Gilmore would take up his tenor and growl a keening march, Danny Thompson stab and worry with a flute, Sun Ra leave his big conga and mount the temple of keyboards for a ritual parenthesis of chromatic zig-zags and electro-howls."
- 7 To perform death growl vocals. intransitive
Example
More examples"Let dogs delight to bark and bite, For God hath made them so; Let bears and lions growl and fight, For 'tis their nature too. But, children, you should never let Such angry passions rise; Your little hands were never made To tear each other's eyes."
Etymology
From Middle English groulen, grollen, gurlen (“of the bowels: to growl, rumble”), either possibly from Old French groler (variant of croler (“to be agitated, shake”)), grouler, grouller (“to growl, grumble”), from Frankish *grullen, *gruljan or from Old English gryllan, both from Proto-Germanic *gruljaną (“to make a sound; to growl, grumble, rumble”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰer- (“to make a noise; to mumble, murmur; to rattle; to grind; to rub, stroke”), probably ultimately imitative. The word is cognate with Middle Dutch grollen (“to make a noise; to croak, grumble, murmur; to be angry”) (modern Dutch grollen (“to grumble”)), German grollen (“to rumble; to be angry, bear ill will”), Old English grillan, griellan (“to provoke, offend; to gnash the teeth”). Compare grill. The noun is derived from the verb.
Related phrases
More for "growl"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.