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''keening'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260130112253-00-⌔
keening - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Adjective
keening (not comparable)
- Sharp, shrill, especially of a sound.
- ✤ The keening sound of a dentist’s drill sets my teeth on edge.
- ✤ When Leo is happy, he bursts out in riffs of scat singing, making up little melodies as he goes. When he’s basically content but feeling restless, he makes a sound like tikka, tikka, tikka. If he’s more anxious than that, he makes a sound like Jimmy Durante: “Atch-cha-cha!” A sudden burst of happiness can inspire Leo to whirl his arms around and gallop in circles shouting, “Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!” When he’s tired, he makes a soft keening noise. And when Leo is hungry, he just sobs his heart out.1
- ✤ As Black Sabbath’s doomsayer-in-chief, Osbourne could summon a true sense of terror in his keening cries in a way that heightened the band’s muscular dirges.2
Noun
keening (countable and uncountable, plural keenings)
- Intense mournful wailing after a death, often at a funeral or wake.
- ✤ * 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.*3
- (by extension) An unpleasant wailing sound.
Verb
keening
- present participle and gerund of keen
Etymology
From keen + -ing, from Irish caoin.
Pronunciation
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
2015, Steve Silberman, chapter 2, in Megan Newman, editor, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, New York: Avery, →ISBN, page 46: ↩
2025 July 22, Kory Grow, “Ozzy Osbourne obituary: The Godfather of Heavy Metal who changed the world”, in Rolling Stone : ↩
1988, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions, Faber & Faber Limited (2021), page 85: ↩
Fields
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parent::|↑| 𓉘Æₐ’𓉝 English K~ ▢ | ”keening” ▫ᴱᴺ ⧼[[| ]]⧽