growl
Pluralgrowls
Pluralgrowls
Formsgrowls, growling, growled
- 1A deep, rumbling, threatening sound that an animal makes in its throat.
A deep growl rose from the lion as the hyenas circled.
The bear's warning growls echoed through the campsite.
Note
The animal noise is the familiar meaning, but the word began in the bowels. Middle English groulen meant to rumble, of the stomach. It may have come through Old French groler, 'to shake', or from Old English gryllan, both traced to Proto-Germanic *gruljaną. Applied to beasts, it gathers threat-words around it: a low savage growl, a deep growl. The noise is a warning as much as a sound.
- 2To make a deep, throaty sound, as an angry animal does, or to give forth an angry, grumbling noise.
The guard dog growled low in its throat at the intruder.
Big cats growl to warn rivals away from their territory.
Note
The intransitive verb takes at for its target, as in the dog growled at me. It moves from beasts to grumblers without changing shape. Isaac Watts gives the animal version in 1806: 'Let bears and lions growl and fight'. The Pic Nic Papers of 1841 gives the human one, with people who 'growl at their breakfast'. Snarl stands closest to it, with gnar, gnarl and gurl nearby.
- 3
- 4The rumbling sound made by a person's empty stomach when hungry.
A sudden growl from her stomach reminded her she had skipped breakfast.
The growls of his empty stomach were impossible to ignore by noon.
Note
An old use that looks like a new one: Middle English groulen, the ancestor of growl, was said of the bowels, meaning to growl or rumble. Today it reads as an extension of the animal's throaty warning, but the stomach had the word early. It usually takes a possessive, as in "the growl of his stomach" in Rique Johnson's Whispers from a Troubled Heart (2004), and the verb works the same way: my stomach growled.
- 5To express something in a low, angry, growling voice.
The old sailor growled a complaint about the weather.
Coaches often growl instructions from the sidelines.
Similarsnarl, bark, grumble, mutter, grunt
Note
The transitive verb takes the feeling or the words as its object: the old man growled his displeasure. In an 1853 story in The British Journal, Bastane 'growled an invective'. Compare the intransitive growl, where the anger is aimed at someone with at. Here the object supplies the content, so the voice becomes a way of delivering a message.
- 6A low, aggressive grumbling sound that expresses anger.
Like distant thunder shaped into a voice: low and threatening.
He met every order with a low growl of complaint.
The workers responded with growls of protest when their break was canceled.
Note
Scrooge sets the pattern in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843): he 'walked out with a growl'. That growl is a surly complaint more than a noise. A grievance is what separates this from the throaty human sound, which can be pure frustration. Often the words themselves are barely there, like the Welsh farmer's 'unintelligible ejaculation which sounded very much like a growl'.
- 7To sing using the deep, guttural, growling vocal style of extreme metal music.
The vocalist growls throughout the album's heaviest tracks.
Few singers can growl for an entire set without losing their voice.
- 8A deep, guttural, growling vocal technique used in death metal and related styles of music.
Her growl on the record sits somewhere between a roar and a rumble, pure extreme metal.
The album's brutal growls are layered over blast beats and downtuned guitars.
- 9In music, a deep, rumbling tone played on a wind instrument such as a trumpet or trombone.
The trombonist's growl gave the ballad a smoky, late-night feel.
Duke Ellington's band was known for the growls of its brass section.
Note
Jazz brass players make this sound with hardware as well as breath. John Chilton gives the recipe. Fit a small straight mute (a cornet mute for trumpet, a trumpet mute for trombone), cover the bell with a plumber's rubber plunger, and move it in and out to shape the tone. Bill Dobbins counts growls among the expressive devices jazz drew from European instruments, and he notes that Ellington did not originate them.
- 10To give out a deep, rumbling tone, as a trombone or other wind instrument does.
The trombone growled low beneath the singer's melody.
Muted horns growl whenever the band slips into that smoky style.
Similarrumble
Note
In practice the player growls as readily as the horn. Duke Ellington recalled that Bubber Miley 'used to growl all night long, playing gutbucket on his horn'. That was when the band decided 'to forget all about the sweet music'. Growling stands for the rough, earthy side of the music, set against sweetness. How the sound is made belongs to the jazz noun.
- 11To play a wind instrument in a way that makes it produce a low, rumbling sound.
The soloist growled his horn until the crowd roared.
Veteran players growl their trumpets to get that classic jazz sound.
Note
Transitive growl can take two kinds of object. The horn itself can be the object, as in he growled his horn. In Gerald Majer's The Velvet Lounge (2005), though, John Gilmore takes up his tenor to 'growl a keening march', and there the tune is what gets growled. Either way the technique is that of the jazz growl; the object simply names what is being roughened.
- 12In computing, to send a notification to a user through the Growl software library.
The script growls to let you know the backup has completed.
Configure the tool to growl on every failed login attempt.
Note
A verb made from a product name: Growl was a software library for notifications, and to growl is to pop a message up to the user through it. It is used without an object. A script growls when a backup finishes, or a tool growls on a failed login. It belongs to programmers' talk about that one tool and has nothing to do with the animal sense.
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Origin
From Middle English groulen, grollen, gurlen, originally used of the bowels rumbling. It possibly comes from Old French groler (a variant of croler, "to shake") or from a Germanic source going back to Proto-Germanic *gruljaną ("to make a sound, growl, rumble") and ultimately Proto-Indo-European *gʰer- ("to make a noise"), probably imitative in origin. It is related to Dutch grollen and German grollen ("to rumble; to be angry"). The noun comes from the verb.