Word.ws English Dictionary

whiddle

whiddle verb: to inform on someone.

Verb

whiddle (third-person singular simple present whiddles, present participle whiddling, simple past and past participle whiddled)

  1. (slang) To inform on someone.
    • He said he only wanted one thing — if I'd chuck Gursey out again, in case he went whiddling to the colonel.2003, Brian Penton, The Inheritors, page 475
  2. (obsolete, thieves' cant) To shine.
    • Old Noll is whiddling bright, / The dull world is asleep, / 'Tis a high spiced Toby night, / Let's in our saddles leap; […]1845, Lincoln Fortescue, The Life and Adventures of Jack Sheppard, page 429
    • OLIVER WHIDDLES: The moon shines. According to his physical description in the Black Books, Oliver whiddled on Hugh Smith's left arm.2019, Simon Barnard, James Hardy Vaux's 1819 Dictionary of Criminal Slang

Forms of whiddle

third-person singular presentwhiddles
present participlewhiddling
past participlewhiddled
pastwhiddled

Questions about whiddle

What does whiddle mean?
Whiddle means to inform on someone.
What part of speech is whiddle?
Whiddle is a verb.
What is the past tense of whiddle?
The past tense of whiddle is whiddled.

Words near whiddle in the dictionary

  1. Whidbys
  2. whidded
  3. Whidden
  4. Whiddens
  5. whidding
  6. whiddle
  7. whiddled
  8. whiddles
  9. whiddling
  10. Whiddon
  11. Whiddons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whiddle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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