keening

Pluralkeenings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Loud, grief-stricken wailing that mourners make after a death, often at a funeral or wake.

   Like a wordless song of grief, rising and falling over the dead.

   The women's keening rose and fell through the long night of the wake.

   Mourners broke into keening as the coffin was lowered into the grave.

   Similarwailing, lamentation, lament, weeping

   Note

   A mourning sound with an Irish name: the verb keen comes from Irish caoin, and this noun is formed from it with -ing. It works as a mass noun (the keening went on all night) and as a count noun for a single lament, with keenings as the plural. Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions (1988) hears it as shrill and sharp, but grief sets it apart from the merely unpleasant wail.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of keen.

   The mourners spent the night keening over the body of their fallen chief.

   A low keening rose from the back of the funeral hall.

   Note

   One verb form, two constructions. Used intransitively, keening means uttering a wail, often followed by over or for. Used transitively, it takes the dead or the lament itself as its object. A rare verb keen, "to make cold, to sharpen," shares the spelling, so "keening a blade" is technically possible but would puzzle most readers. The gerund shades directly into the mourners' wail.

   All night she sat by the fire, keening her drowned son.

   The old women were keening a lament no one had taught them.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   An unpleasant, drawn-out wailing sound, harsh to the ear.

   Like nails dragged down a chalkboard, but stretched into a long cry.

   The keening of the brakes set everyone's teeth on edge.

   A thin keening rose from the machinery deep in the factory.

   Similarwhine, screech, squeal, shriek, wailing

   Note

   Here the grief drains out and only the sound is left. By extension, keening names any drawn-out wail that grates, whether from brakes, machinery or wind. Because the funeral sense stays close, the word can give a mechanical noise a faint undertone of lament. Where that overtone is unwanted, whine or screech is plainer. Like its source, it is countable (a thin keening) or uncountable.

4. 4
   adjective

   Sharp and shrill, especially when describing a sound.

   Like the thin, piercing edge of a distant scream.

   A keening note from the violin cut through the silent hall.

   The keening shriek of the alarm woke the whole building.

   Similarshrill, piercing, high-pitched

   Note

   The language of mourning lent to any piercing noise. The word is keen plus -ing, from Irish caoin, the same root as the mourners' wail. It is not comparable: a sound is keening or it is not, so write shriller, not "more keening." It sits naturally before nouns of sound, such as a keening sound from a dentist's drill or the keening cries Kory Grow heard in Ozzy Osbourne's voice in 2025.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4