howl at the moon in English

Forms: howls at the moon [present, singular, third-person], howling at the moon [participle, present], howled at the moon [participle, past], howled at the moon [past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Etymology: After the stereotypical behaviour of wolves howling at the moon in folklore. Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} howl at the moon (third-person singular simple present howls at the moon, present participle howling at the moon, simple past and past participle howled at the moon)

Inflected forms

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "After the stereotypical behaviour of wolves howling at the moon in folklore.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "howls at the moon",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "howling at the moon",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "howled at the moon",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "howled at the moon",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "howl at the moon (third-person singular simple present howls at the moon, present participle howling at the moon, simple past and past participle howled at the moon)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To spend considerable time and effort fruitlessly in a hopeless endeavor."
      ],
      "id": "en-howl_at_the_moon-en-verb-DwZjDWsQ",
      "links": [
        [
          "considerable",
          "considerable"
        ],
        [
          "effort",
          "effort"
        ],
        [
          "fruitlessly",
          "fruitlessly"
        ],
        [
          "hopeless",
          "hopeless"
        ],
        [
          "endeavor",
          "endeavor"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To spend considerable time and effort fruitlessly in a hopeless endeavor."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "howl at the moon"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "After the stereotypical behaviour of wolves howling at the moon in folklore.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "howls at the moon",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "howling at the moon",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "howled at the moon",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "howled at the moon",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "howl at the moon (third-person singular simple present howls at the moon, present participle howling at the moon, simple past and past participle howled at the moon)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To spend considerable time and effort fruitlessly in a hopeless endeavor."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "considerable",
          "considerable"
        ],
        [
          "effort",
          "effort"
        ],
        [
          "fruitlessly",
          "fruitlessly"
        ],
        [
          "hopeless",
          "hopeless"
        ],
        [
          "endeavor",
          "endeavor"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To spend considerable time and effort fruitlessly in a hopeless endeavor."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "howl at the moon"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-18 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-03-02 using wiktextract (f2d86ce and 633533e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"howl at the moon" meaning in English

Verb

Inflected forms