Words / K / General

keen

verb/kiːn/

C2CEFR level
85/100Rarity: very rare
LiteraryRegister

To wail loudly in lamentation for the dead.

The old women keened through the night beside the body of the drowned fisherman.

Similar: wail, lament

Origin: From Irish caoinim 'I wail, lament'.

Topic: lament in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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