Keening

adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Intense mournful wailing after a death, often at a funeral or wake. countable, uncountable

    "Keening. I remember keening that seemed to go on all through the night: shrill, sharp, shiny, needles of sound piercing cleanly and deeply to let the anguish in, not out."

  2. 2
    An unpleasant wailing sound. broadly, countable, uncountable
Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of keen form-of, gerund, participle, present
Adjective
  1. 1
    Sharp, shrill, especially of a sound. not-comparable

    "The keening sound of a dentist's drill sets my teeth on edge."

Synonyms

All synonyms
acuteear piercinghowlingkeenmoaningmourning

Example

More examples

"The keening sound of a dentist's drill sets my teeth on edge."

Etymology

From keen + -ing, from Irish caoin.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.