Other forms: wailing, wails, wailed
To wail is to cry out long and loud in grief. A single held note with no words in it.
The sound is the point: a wail is drawn out where a sob is broken, which is why the word suits mourning, sirens and wind equally. Babies wail, and so do air-raid warnings. It carries no embarrassment in some cultures and a good deal in others, and English writing often uses it to mark grief as public rather than private. As a noun, the wail of a siren is one of the commonest uses of all.
To wail is to cry woe. Old Norse væla came straight from væ, woe, the same interjection that gives English its woe.
Proto-Indo-European
*wáy
Proto-Germanic
*wai
Old Norse
væla — to wail
Middle English
weilen
English, today
wail
Built from
c. 1300, Middle English weilen, waylen (“to sob, cry, wail”), from Old Norse væla (“to wail”), from væ, vei (“woe”), from Proto-Germanic wai (whence also Old English wā (“woe”) (English woe)), from Proto-Indo-European wáy. The verb is first attested in the intransitive sense; the transitive sense developed in mid-14th c.. The noun came from the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Sounds & Noises
First appears in chapter 4 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word