WAILING Synonyms: 207 Similar and Opposite Words

wailing 1 of 2

adjective

as in weeping

expressing or suggesting mourning a wailing quality in her voice that makes her a natural for country music

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wailing

2 of 2

verb

present participle of wail

as in screaming

to express dissatisfaction, pain, or resentment usually tiresomely the state's residents are always wailing about their high taxes

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as in howling

to make a long loud mournful sound the women stood beside the coffins, wailing for their fallen sons and daughters

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as in moaning

to utter a moan the patient lay in her bed, occasionally softly wailing in pain

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of wailing

Adjective

Sitting opposite an old people’s home in a residential corner of Paris’ 14th arrondissement, La Santé’s unassuming presence is only given away by the occasional wailing siren as prisoners are transported to and from the site. — Joseph Ataman, CNN Money, 14 Oct. 2025

Verb

Moirologists, as they’re now known, were usually women, and their job was to display grief by crying, wailing, and tearing their hair. — Encyclopedia Britannica, 9 Oct. 2026 Luann is unfazed and unmoving, cigar in hand, fedora on her head, posing for the camera despite the woman wailing from beneath her ass. — Tom Smyth, Vulture, 28 Sep. 2026 The bold clarity of the performances was energizing, but the wailing sometimes sounded like parody grief. — Theater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 11 Sep. 2026 Except kids being kids, my son would keep needling and my daughter would keep wailing. — Dana O’Neil, CNN Money, 9 Sep. 2026 Osama, donning his bulletproof blue press jacket and armed with his camera, is accosted by a woman wailing that 200 of her neighbors are gone. — Ritesh Mehta, IndieWire, 5 Sep. 2026 When the coroner’s deputy lifted Malachi’s body to take it away that night in October 2023, there was no wailing or sobbing from his parents. — Audrey Dutton, ProPublica, 25 Aug. 2026 This Lusitania didn’t sink as a formal band played, but the ticking of each man’s pocket watch synchronized to form a furious percussion section, and all those wailing women’s voices layered into girl-group harmonies. — Claire Carusillo, Harpers Magazine, 4 Aug. 2026 Instead of wailing in agony after sampling the vengefully spiked bird, Prince fell in love with it and founded the BBQ Chicken Shack in 1945. — Ellen Fort, Bon Appetit Magazine, 31 July 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for wailing

Adjective

And every day, across from them, outside the clinic, about to enter or just leaving, there were women hugging each other and weeping.

— David Mamet, National Review, 11 Aug. 2022
The show manages to stay on the brink — always laughing, never quite weeping — for its entire length.

— Helen Shaw, Vulture, 8 Dec. 2021

Definition of weeping

Verb

At an intersection in Hyde Park that, days earlier, had been the scene of chaos — a young girl on the ground, a car with a teenage boy on the windshield, a mother screaming — Jonathan Hale led his band of rebels.

— Andrew J. Campa, Los Angeles Times, 16 Oct. 2026
Someone who people think is abrasive and is screaming ‘Love me,’ but punching people at the same time.

— David Fear, Rolling Stone, 13 Oct. 2026

Definition of screaming

Verb

The living room and bedrooms faced 96th, a crosstown corridor over which ambulances and police cars sped day and night, their sirens howling.

— Via Scribner, Literary Hub, 9 Oct. 2026
The masked figure then loops back, and a howling Wood appears in the frame.

— J. B. MacKinnon, Harpers Magazine, 22 Sep. 2026

Definition of howling

Verb

It's been a big few months for Austin Abrams moaning and groaning his way through some of the worst situations imaginable.

— Megan McCluskey, Time, 16 Oct. 2026
For a cold moment the silence locked a grip on our table, though it was broken, at the edges, by the golf commentators moaning and harrumphing, Rory McIlroy having had a canary on a seventeenth fairway somewhere this championship Sunday.

— Kevin Barry, New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2026

Definition of moaning

Adjective

East Suffolk, a windblown span of marshy coastland, has a reputation for stark, mournful beauty, and for drawing creative people with a taste for isolation and escape.

— Nathan Heller, New Yorker, 19 Oct. 2026
And after Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl died in 2024, dozens of mournful fans gathered to say goodbye to the beloved creature who flew around Manhattan and became a joy to many after someone let him out of his zoo enclosure the previous year.

— ABC News, ABC News, 15 Oct. 2026

Definition of mournful

Verb

The splitscreen offered by the contenders from Texas left even diehard Republicans groaning.

— Philip Elliott, Time, 30 Sep. 2026
Whatever the result, Sunday’s election in the state of Saxony-Anhalt is a clear signal flare that the foundations of modern Germany are groaning.

— Mark Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor, 4 Sep. 2026