mewl
/mjuːl
/verb [no object] (often as adjective mewling)
1(Especially of a baby) cry feebly or querulously; whimper: dozens of mewling babies...
- She rocks the baby, who is mewling hopefully near her breast.
- The little Orion whimpered and mewled quietly, helpless to everything around him.
- In his ‘As You Like It’, Shakespeare traced the life of a man from mewling infant to whining schoolboy to sighing lover, to cursing soldier, to pompous middle age and piping old age and then.
Synonyms
whimper, cry, whine, squall
informal grizzle
literary pule
1.1(Of a cat or gull) mew: the mewling cry of a hawk...
- In response, their debut single for the major was a playful, painful cover of Al Green's ‘L.O.V.E. Love’ which featured a tortured sounding man trying to hit the high notes like an alley cat mewling on a fence.
- The cat was mewling piteously the other day and I said ‘she sounds like a siren.’
- The little girl's soft, dusty blonde locks brushed the screen and her high-pitched protests sounded like a kitten mewling.
Origin
Late Middle English: imitative; compare with miaul.