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Caterwauling   Listen
noun
Caterwauling  n.  The cry of cats; a harsh, disagreeable noise or cry like the cry of cats.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Caterwauling" Quotes from Famous Books



... take another cruise with a lover so long as I live. Tom led me all manner of dances, and we were twice fired at from farm-houses where he was caterwauling beneath the windows with a guitar. It seems he had heard that flame of his sing a Spanish air at Jedburgh. Tom must needs pick it up, and you have no idea how he pestered me. Go where we would, he kept harping on that abominable ditty, in the hopes that his mistress might hear ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... would go by default. Under these circumstances I had no choice but to do so. But as I sat in the committee room while the order of the meeting was being arranged, and heard my audience shouting, singing, crowing like cocks, whistling like parrots, caterwauling like cats, and keeping up a continuous uproar, I thought to myself, "I have got to go into that, and control it somehow so as to be heard"; I confess I did feel wrecked upon God. Professor Maclagan, who took ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... it is Pi-ute—possibly it is Digger. I am satisfied it was named by the Diggers—those degraded savages who roast their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones with tar, and "gaum" it thick all over their heads and foreheads and ears, and go caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning. These are the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... which resolved themselves into a fantastic medley of dream images. There was a cat trying to get at the pigeons in the coop which Mr. Savor had carried Idella to see. It clawed and miauled at the lattice-work of lath, and its caterwauling became like the cry of a child, so like that it woke Annie from her sleep, and still kept on. She lay shuddering a moment; it seemed as if the dead minister's ghost flitted from the room, while the crying defined and located itself more and more, till she knew ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... rear room was locked, with one of Mother Corey's guards at the door. From inside came the rare sound of water splashing, mixed with a wheezing, off-key caterwauling. Mother Corey was apparently making good on his promise to take a bath. As they reached the hall, one of Trench's lieutenants came through the entrance, waving his badge at the protesting ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... the top of our projecting balcony, easily reach them by stretching out an arm. A real godsend for all the thirsty cats in the neighborhood, on warm summer nights, is this corner of the roof with our gayly painted tubs, and it proves a delightful trysting-place for them, after all their caterwauling and long solitary rambles on ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... spectral about their shadowy forms, which showed in grotesquely baggy and bulgy shapes in the uncertain light. Some of them wore immense and curious white head-dresses, which gave them the appearance of poulticed thumbs; and they all went on scraping and twiddling and caterwauling with a doleful monotony that Horace felt must be getting on his guests' nerves, as it ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... in beasts' as well as men's hearts Wakes up love, delight and longing, Raving madness and wild frenzy. And yet, we must bear this insult, That when nightly in sweet mewing We our love-pangs are outpouring, Men will only laugh and mock us, And our finest compositions Rudely brand as caterwauling. And in spite of this we witness That these same fault-finding beings Can produce such horrid sounds as Those which I have just now heard. Are such tones not like a nosegay Made of straw, and thorns, and nettles, In the midst a prickly thistle? And in presence of this maiden ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... to be rather tiring. It was mainly about Donal. But Mrs. Sclater opened the piano, and made a diversion. She played something brilliant, and then sang an Italian song in strillaceous style, revealing to Donal's clownish ignorance a thorough mastery of caterwauling. Then she asked Miss Kimble to play something, who declined, without mentioning that she had neither voice nor ear nor love of music, but said Miss Galbraith should sing—"for once in a way, as a treat.—That little Scotch song you sing ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald



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