baying

baying

1. present participle of bay

   The mob approached the castle, baying for royal blood.

baying (plural bayings)

1. Action of the verb to bay; howling.

   She quickly grew weary of the beast's constant baying.

   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, H.L. Brækstad, transl., Folk and Fairy Tales, page 279:

     When I had advanced some distance into the forest, I heard the notes of the bugle and the distant baying of hounds in full cry, which gradually ceased, till nothing but a faint echo of the bugle reached my ear.

2. An instance of baying; a howl.
   • 1877, Charles Cayley (translator), Homer Iliad, book XXI

     Soon as he hears bayings, and is not alarm'd nor affrighted...

   • 1880, Mark Twain, chapter 24, in A Tramp Abroad‎:

     ...the distressed bayings of his dogs, ...

   • 1885, "The Dogs of War", All the Year Round, Charles Dickens, Jr (editor), Volume XXXVI

     And the thrill which their ill-omened bayings send through people at large is a measure of the state of tension in which the general mind is held.

   • 1907, Frank Justus Miller (translator), Seneca, Hercules Furens Act III

     Who, tossing back and forth his triple heads,/ With mighty bayings watches o'er the realm.

• Biyang, abying, bignay