Whip

How to spell whip

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce whip

What does whip mean?

1. verbTo strike with a lash, or to move something suddenly and quickly.
2. nounA length of leather or cord on a handle, used for striking or driving animals.
3. verbTo beat cream or eggs rapidly until light and fluffy.
4. nounA party official responsible for ensuring members vote according to the party line.

Whip in a sentence

• verb

  The cold wind began to whip across the open field.

• noun

  The rider kept a leather whip tucked under one arm.

• verb

  The recipe asks you to whip the cream until it forms soft peaks.

• noun

  The chief whip urged every member to attend the late vote.

• verb

  He watched the jockey whip the horse down the final stretch.

• noun

  A coachman once carried a long whip to urge the team forward.

Where does whip come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Whip arrived in English in the 1300s as the verb whippen, meaning to move briskly or to strike with a flexible lash, and it is closely related to Middle Dutch and Middle Low German wippen, meaning to swing or to leap. The underlying Germanic root carried the sense of a rapid, snapping motion, which is exactly why the word covers both the sudden movement of a hand and the cracking action of a leather cord. The noun for the implement itself, the device used to drive animals, grew naturally out of the verb a little later. From the idea of driving and urging on came the political sense in eighteenth-century Britain, where a whip was the member who kept fellow politicians in line, borrowed from the hunting term whipper-in, the rider who kept the hounds from straying. The cookery sense, beating cream or eggs into a froth with quick strokes, draws on the same notion of fast, repeated motion. The simple spelling rarely troubles writers, since the sound maps cleanly to the letters.

How the word is built

• whip (a single root word; from Middle English whippen, to move quickly or strike)