Other forms: yowling, yowls
To yowl is to give a long loud wailing cry. A cat at three in the morning is the standard example.
The sound is drawn out and unhappy, and it belongs to cats above all, though dogs, foxes and occasionally people manage it. It differs from a howl mainly in pitch, since a yowl is higher and more complaining. As a noun it names the sound itself. The word is imitative, and English keeps a whole shelf of these animal-noise words including yelp, growl and mewl.
1verbyowlTo make a long, loud, wailing cry.
“Two cats were yowling in the alley.”
A yowl is a Norse bellow. Old Norse gaula meant to low like a cow, to howl or to scream, and Icelandic gaula still means to yell.
Old Norse
gaula — to low, bellow, howl, scream
Middle English
youlen
English, today
yowl
Built from
From Middle English youlen, goulen, from Old Norse gaula (“to low, bellow, howl, scream”), related to Icelandic gaula (“to yell, howl, roar”), Faroese geyla (“to bawl, squall, shout, yell, bellow”), Norwegian gaule (“to roar, howl, whine, weep noisily”), dialectal Swedish gjöla, Scots gowl (“to howl, yell, roar”), Shetlandic Scots gjol. Initial y- possibly influenced by yollen, yellen (“to yell”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 25 of A Man Called Ove.
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