> as lemmas

1599 A. Hume Hymnes sig. G1 Be cruining Bulls of heigh and haughtie minde.

1828 R. Southey Brough Bells That cruning of the kine.

1859 ‘G. Eliot’ Adam Bede II. ii. xviii. 21 The cocks and hens..made only crooning subdued noises.

1872 W. Black Strange Adventures Phaeton xix. 270 As soft and musical as the crooning of a wood-pigeon.

1923 B. James (title of song) Carolina Mammy. A real Southern mammy song—the crooning kind.

1927 Melody Maker Aug. 784/3 ‘Muddy Water’ has a feature in a sweet crooning vocal introduction.

1929 Melody Maker Dec. 1139/3 His crooning style of singing.

1931 Musical Courier (N.Y.) in Oxf. Compan. Music (1938) 1018/2 No jazz or cheap crooning stuff had a place in her repertoire.

1932 Literary Digest 30 Jan. 23/2 ‘You can't help thinking badly of any man who would degrade himself whining in that way..’ he said of crooning.

1935 P. G. Wodehouse Blandings Castle v. 116 Everybody knows what Crooning Tenors are... They sit at the piano and gaze into a girl's eyes and sing in a voice that sounds like gas escaping from a pipe about Love and the Moonlight and You.

1959 Chambers's Encycl. XII. 570/2 In that type of vocal performance known as ‘crooning’ the lower range of the voice is chiefly used, and that more in the manner of conversation than of singing, though falsetto notes are often introduced. There is a noticeable gliding or sliding from one pitch to another and the intonation is often deliberately indefinite... Characteristic also is a certain oscillation or catch in the voice as it comes to rest momentarily upon a sustained sound.