Word.ws English Dictionary

whimpering

whimpering is the present participle and gerund of whimper.

Meaning of whimper

Verb

whimper (third-person singular simple present whimpers, present participle whimpering, simple past and past participle whimpered)

  1. To cry or sob softly and intermittently.
    • The lonely puppy began to whimper as soon as we left the room.
  2. To cry with a low, whining, broken voice; to whine; to complain.
    • Was ther euer yet prechers, but ther wer gainſayers? that ſpurned? that winſt? that whimpered againſt him?1549 April 1 (Gregorian calendar), Hughe Latymer [i.e., Hugh Latimer], Augustine Bernher, compiler, “[27 Sermons Preached by the Ryght Reuerende Father in God and Constant Matir of Iesus Christe...
  3. To say something in a whimpering manner.
    • “Master, please don’t punish me!” he whimpered.

See all 4 meanings of whimper

Noun

whimpering (plural whimperings)

  1. The sound of one who whimpers; a whimper; a feeble complaint.
    • And my sea-birds made a great confusion in the awful calm, filling it with flashing pinions and plaintive whimperings, and settling into the shape of a dome all formed of beating wings, in which I on my ship and the tridentiferous god of the sea were enclosed, face to face.1912, Prospero [pseudonym; Frederick Rolfe], Caliban [pseudonym; Harry Pirie-Gordon], “The Thirteenth Papyrus”, in The Weird of the Wanderer: Being the Papyrus Records of Some Incidents in One of the...
    • As I lay waiting I could hear a sort of murmurousness beyond the door. It seemed composed of whimperings, slitherings, and shufflings, punctuated occasionally by a raised voice in the distance.1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 14

Forms of whimpering

pluralwhimperings

Words formed from whimpering

Questions about whimpering

What does whimpering mean?
Whimpering means the sound of one who whimpers; a whimper; a feeble complaint.
What is whimpering the present participle and gerund of?
Whimpering is the present participle and gerund of whimper.
What part of speech is whimpering?
Whimpering is a noun.
What is the plural of whimpering?
The plural of whimpering is whimperings.

Words near whimpering in the dictionary

  1. whimperative
  2. whimperatives
  3. whimpered
  4. whimperer
  5. whimperers
  6. whimpering
  7. whimperingly
  8. whimperings
  9. whimpers
  10. whimpery
  11. whimple

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whimpering (page history and authors); whimper (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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Cite this entry: “whimpering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whimpering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.