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say it: WAY-ling
wailing is a noun and adjective meaning "loud cries made while weeping". It is pronounced /ˈweɪlɪŋ/ — WAY-ling. It carries 2 recorded senses.
vocally expressing grief or sorrow or resembling such expression
“lamenting sinners”
“wailing mourners”
“the wailing wind”
“wailful bagpipes”
“tangle her desires with wailful sonnets”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for wailing come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.