Whine

How to spell whine

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce whine

What does whine mean?

1. verbTo complain in a feeble, drawn-out, irritating way.
2. verbTo make a long, high-pitched sound, as an animal or a machine does.
3. nounA long, high-pitched sound or a feeble complaint.

Whine in a sentence

• verb

  The children always whine when their screen time ends.

• verb

  The dog will whine at the door until someone lets it out.

• noun

  The constant whine of the drill filled the whole workshop.

• verb

  He tends to whine about his workload instead of dealing with it.

• verb

  The old engine began to whine as it climbed the steep hill.

• noun

  There was a familiar whine in his voice as he listed his grievances.

Where does whine come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English verb hwinan, which described the whizzing or hissing noise of something moving rapidly through the air, such as an arrow. It belongs to a family of Germanic sound-imitating words, and a close relative survives in Old Norse hvina, meaning to make such a sound. Over the centuries the meaning narrowed from any high, sharp noise to the specific long, plaintive cry of a child, an animal, or a straining machine, and from there it slid easily into the figurative sense of complaining in a feeble, drawn-out tone. The spelling keeps the old 'hw' cluster of Anglo-Saxon, now reversed to 'wh-' and pronounced simply as 'w', which is what makes it sound exactly like the unrelated drink 'wine'. That clash of identical sound but different origin is the whole reason the two words are so easily muddled on the page.

How the word is built

• whine (from Old English hwinan: to make a whizzing or hissing sound); the silent initial 'wh-' marks its native Germanic origin

Words that sound like whine

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• wine: An alcoholic drink made from fermented grapes or other fruit.