howling

noun

1. 1

   The act of producing howls.

   The howling of wolves is haunting at night.

verb

1. 1

   Also a form of howlpresent participle and gerund of howl

   "They have turned a great old English institution into a shameful clip-joint. It's a shuddering, howling tragedy."

adjective

1. 1

   That howls.

   howling wind

   A few minutes later a howling mob was at the door.

   We have already seen in Chapter I how man stepped upwards from the level of a howling brute to the higher level of an articulate being, and thence to the still higher level of a singing creature.

   It consisted of marching on to College green or St Stephen's green on a day when there was a howling gale and the wind was blowing about us –I am sure hon. Members today are familiar with this –to utter a few, well-chosen platitudes.

2. 2

   That causes one to howl or feel like howling; deeply distressing.

   Ah! the death of the poor, the empty entrails, howling hunger, the animal appetite that leads one with chattering teeth to fill one's stomach with beastly refuse in this great Paris, so bright and golden!

   Some agency must control the allocation of frequencies or all our airways would be a howling chaos: but there is no rational justification for the kind of regulation that the Federal Communications Commission proposes for our industry.

   A pervasive sense of optimism led settlers in southern New Zealand to transform their properites from a 'howling wilderness' to a humanised rural landscape.

3. 3

   Used as an intensifier

   Those were days that I had success, for I could see it, and feel it, and taste it, and my patrons caught the contagion and we had a howling success .

   Boy, what a howling triumph if we should find our way out of here and go walking into Stark House by night !

   The majority of your audience comes to your tale with one hopeful expectation: Tell me a howling good story.

Forms

plural

howlings