Howling

How to spell howling

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce howling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does howling mean?

1. adjectiveMaking a long, loud, mournful cry, as an animal or the wind does.
2. adjectiveInformally, very great or extreme in degree.

Howling in a sentence

• The howling wolves kept the campers awake all night.

• The launch turned out to be a howling success for the small firm.

• A howling gale battered the coast and tore at the roof tiles.

• There was a howling error in the budget that nobody noticed for weeks.

Where does howling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the verb 'howl', which appears in Middle English as 'houlen' and is essentially imitative: it echoes the long, wavering wail of a dog, wolf, or rising wind. Related forms turn up across the Germanic languages, including Dutch 'huilen' and German 'heulen', both meaning 'to wail or cry out', and many scholars connect this whole family to the Latin verb 'ululare', meaning 'to shriek or howl', which is itself an imitation of the sound. The '-ing' suffix is the ordinary native English ending that turns a verb into its present participle and, by extension, into an adjective describing something that is making that noise. Over time the word stretched beyond literal animal cries to describe a fierce, noisy wind and, in informal use, anything strikingly extreme, as in a 'howling' gale or a 'howling' success. Because the spelling simply stacks a plain verb onto a plain suffix, the only thing to watch is keeping the single 'l' from the base verb rather than doubling it.

How the word is built

• howl (to cry out loudly)
• -ing (present participle / adjectival suffix)