bawl

A drill instructor bawls at an officer candidate

From Middle English baulen, from Old Norse baula (“to low”) and/or Medieval Latin baulō (“to bark”), both from Proto-Germanic *bau- (“to roar”), conflated with Proto-Germanic *bellaną, *ballijaną, *buljaną (“to shout, low, roar”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to sound, roar”). Cognate with Faroese belja (“to low”), Icelandic baula (“to moo, low”), Swedish böla (“to bellow, low”). More at bell.

• (UK) IPA^(key): [bɔːɫ]
• (US) IPA^(key): /bɔl/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /bɑl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Homophone: ball
• Rhymes: -ɔːl

bawl (third-person singular simple present bawls, present participle bawling, simple past and past participle bawled)

1. (transitive) To shout or utter in a loud and intense manner.

   commanders bawling

   • 1929, Dashiel Hammett, The Maltese Falcon, New Yock: Vintage Books (Random House, published 1992, →ISBN, page 117:

     Spade took two long steps and caught Effie Perine by the shoulders. "She didn't get there?" he bawled into her frightened face

2. (intransitive) To wail; to give out a blaring cry.

   Coordinate terms: (cattle sense) croon, bellow, low, moo

   children bawling

   cattle bawling

   • 1859, George Meredith, chapter 5, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC:

     Why did you bawl out just as I was aiming? Who can aim with a fellow bawling in his ear? I've lost the birds through it.

3. (intransitive) To weep profusely.

   children bawling

   mourners bawling

bawl (plural bawls)

1. A loud, intense shouting or wailing.
   • 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard:

     […] that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips.

• ALBW, LBWA

• IPA^(key): /bɔl˧/

bawl

1. blunt

• Lukram Himmat Singh (2013) A Descriptive Grammar of Zou, Canchipur: Manipur University, page 41