keens

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of keen.

   The widow keens over the body until her voice gives out.

   Each spring the village elder keens for the sailors who never returned.

   Note

   A verb that works with or without an object. Without one it means to give a mourning wail, and a preposition points to the dead, as in keens over the body or keens for the drowned. With an object it names either the one mourned (she keens her son) or the cry itself (he keens a lament). A rare transitive use, meaning to sharpen or make cold, shares this form.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of keen.

   The keens of the mourning women carried across the valley at dusk.

   Folklorists recorded several keens before the last singers passed away.

   Note

   Only the mourning noun can be counted. Keen as a wail for the dead takes a plural, while the adjective keen (eager, sharp, fierce, bitter) never does. So keens as a noun always means laments, never enthusiasms. The same spelling also serves the present-tense verb: in the keens of the women the word names a sound, while in she keens it names the act of making it.

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