Whisk

How to spell whisk

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce whisk

What does whisk mean?

1. verbTo beat eggs, cream, or a mixture rapidly so that air is incorporated.
2. verbTo move or transport someone or something somewhere swiftly.
3. nounA kitchen tool of looped wire used to beat or blend ingredients.

Whisk in a sentence

• verb

  Whisk the eggs until they turn pale and frothy.

• verb

  A private car will whisk the guests from the airport to the hotel.

• noun

  She reached for a balloon whisk to fold the sugar in.

• verb

  You should whisk the batter to remove every lump.

• verb

  Staff hurried to whisk the injured player off the field.

• noun

  A sturdy metal whisk works better than a fork for egg whites.

Where does whisk come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Whisk comes from Old Norse, where the word visk meant a wisp or small bundle of hay or grass, the sort of thing you might use to brush crumbs or dust away. The word entered Middle English in the 1300s, at first describing a quick, sweeping movement, the kind a small bundle makes when flicked across a surface. From that idea of brisk flicking came both the verb sense of moving something rapidly and the noun naming the looped wire kitchen tool that beats air into eggs and cream. It shares an ancestry with related Germanic words meaning to wipe or sweep, and the same root sits behind the bundle-of-twigs sense still heard in a birch whisk. The silent-looking opening 'wh' and the tight 'sk' ending are the only real spelling hurdles, both inherited straight from its northern roots.

How the word is built

• whisk (single root, from a Scandinavian word for a wisp or quick sweeping movement)