How to Use yowl in a Sentence

yowl

1 of 2 verb
  • He was yowling in pain.
  • The cat was yowling outside.
  • Some breeds, like Siamese cats, meow and yowl more than others.
    — Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY, 23 July 2022
  • Normally, howling and yowling in the presence of another cat is not a good sign.
    — Joan Morris, Mercury News, 29 Sep. 2025
  • The puppies, blissful as only puppies can be, yipped and yowled, wagged their tails, yawned, ate grass and were brutally, painfully adorable.
    — Connie Ogle, miamiherald, 15 Sep. 2017
  • Often, however, the dead baby returned as a ghost, the zashiki warashi, shaking the walls of the house and yowling.
    — Hanya Yanagihara Kyoko Hamada, New York Times, 10 May 2023
  • Sirens yowled and vents whistled; a motorcycle potato-potato-potatoed and a can skittered on the concrete.
    — Bianca Bosker, The Atlantic, 8 Oct. 2019
  • My normally mild-mannered dog lost her mind, yowling and dancing around the kitchen until someone, anyone, would give her even the smallest morsel of cheese.
    — Molly Fitzpatrick, Bon Appetit, 26 Apr. 2018
  • The bleacher bums behind me began to emit guttural effusions, a sort of existential, yowling yodel.
    — Michael Powell, New York Times, 31 Oct. 2019
  • Detuned guitars warble from the corners of songs; the visuals go medieval; the dark lord Ozzy Osbourne yowls one chorus.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2019
  • Laguna Beach responds to hundreds of complaints each year about dogs unnerving residents with loud or persistent barking and yowling.
    — Hannah Fry, Los Angeles Times, 3 Sep. 2023
  • Cat jump scares, featuring felines yowling or hiding in a cabinet, peaked in the early 1970s and have since dwindled to nearly nothing.
    — Shelly Tan, Washington Post, 20 Oct. 2023
  • Cameron Winter yowls a cappella, with a delivery that would do Jon Spencer proud, before a distorted guitar spirals over pattering drums.
    — Ethan Shanfeld, Variety, 29 Nov. 2023
  • Some, at 15, were already fantasizing about marshaling breakfast for whining, barking, yowling households.
    — Sarah Ruden, National Review, 22 Aug. 2019

yowl

2 of 2 noun
  • Miley Cyrus, in her rodeo yowl on the song, warns some boy to quit it with the pet names.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 5 Nov. 2019
  • When the beat dropped, the dance floor let out a collective yowl as the music picked up speed.
    — Lily Goldberg, New York Times, 23 Aug. 2022
  • All around, Siamese cat yowls, phone camera clicks and gasps at adorableness traveled through the air.
    — Ileana Najarro, Houston Chronicle, 6 Jan. 2018
  • Then, a human yowl cuts through with the urgency of a distress signal.
    — New York Times, 27 June 2022
  • There are whistles and toe taps and yowls and warbles and percussion produced by acrylic nails.
    — Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 1 Apr. 2024
  • Kittens yowl on the dashboard of her old truck, whose windows are up despite the stifling heat.
    — By Michael Browning, miamiherald, 25 Aug. 2015
  • The cat bites with vehemence and a yowl that communicates even to the unschooled.
    — Alexandra Horowitz, The Atlantic, 16 Sep. 2022
  • The Stones tucked lifelong blues scholarship behind the kick and yowl of the music.
    — Jon Pareles, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2016
  • The wind rose to a sustained yowl, shredded the treetops, racked the old lean-to, seemed to be swelling toward a terrible end.
    — Earl Swift, Outside Online, 2 Sep. 2015
  • But, when Yarielis suddenly turned red, opening her mouth in a silent, tearful yowl, the children screamed for their mother to help her.
    — Amanda Milkovits, BostonGlobe.com, 24 Dec. 2021
  • The guitar riffs recall how Mastodon sounded circa Leviathan, paired with Blythe’s inimitable yowls.
    — Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, 12 Sep. 2024
  • The frontman’s last yowl during this section surely rattled the concert hall’s lobby chandelier.
    — Matt Wake | [email protected], al, 25 Sep. 2013
  • The offending yowl had come out of an amplifier, though the issue didn’t involve the amp alone but the fact that it was connected to a hollow-box guitar.
    — David Kirby, WSJ, 17 Jan. 2019
  • The cat sometimes unleashed a penetrating yowl that reminded Ducrot of her husband’s final days.
    — Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 22 July 2024
  • Unfortunately for the would-be lesbian lovers on the run, crazy screaming lady — whose raspy yowl ensnares the listener in a juddering time loop — has other ideas.
    — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 16 Feb. 2024
  • Hearses and Gucci furs and callous relationship advice and desperate questioning all get strung together in drowsy yowls with strikingly logical syntax.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 8 Dec. 2019
  • As a shape-shifting rock poet — a prophet with a nasal yowl — Dylan and his opaque words were particularly attractive for theorists of the literary, musical and conspiratorial varieties.
    — Corey Kilgannon, New York Times, 10 Jan. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'yowl.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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