Howling
adj, name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 The act of producing howls.
"The howling of wolves is haunting at night."
- 2 a long loud emotional utterance wordnet
- 1 present participle and gerund of howl form-of, gerund, participle, present
""They have turned a great old English institution into a shameful clip-joint. It's a shuddering, howling tragedy.""
- 1 That howls. not-comparable
"howling wind"
- 2 That causes one to howl or feel like howling; deeply distressing. not-comparable
"Ah! the death of the poor, the empty entrails, howling hunger, the animal appetite that leads one with chattering teeth to fill one's stomach with beastly refuse in this great Paris, so bright and golden!"
- 3 Used as an intensifier colloquial, not-comparable
"Those were days that I had success, for I could see it, and feel it, and taste it, and my patrons caught the contagion and we had a howling success ."
- 1 extraordinarily good or great; used especially as intensifiers wordnet
- 1 A surname originating as a patronymic.
Example
More examples"The dogs were howling at the moon."
Etymology
From Middle English howlynge, howelynge, equivalent to howl + -ing (gerund suffix).
From Middle English howlinge, howlynge, equivalent to howl + -ing (present participle ending).
From a medieval diminutive of the given name Hugh.
More for "howling"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.