Word.ws English Dictionary

whinny

/ˈwɪni/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

whinny noun: a gentle neigh.

Noun

whinny (plural whinnies)

  1. A gentle neigh.
    • And moving out they found the stately horse, / Who now no more a vassal to the thief, / But free to stretch his limbs in lawful fight, / Neigh'd with all gladness as they came, and stoop'd / With a low whinny toward the pair: […]1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Enid”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, pages 85–86
    • When my wife and I heard a plaintive whinny from our laundry room the other day, we knew that our old dryer had cycled its last load.2026 January 16, Danny Heitman, “An empty nester’s ode to the cycles of laundry – and life”, in The Christian Science Monitor

Verb

whinny (third-person singular simple present whinnies, present participle whinnying, simple past and past participle whinnied)

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To make a gentle neigh.
    • Cattle lowed here and there, and horses whinnied to be fed.1904 May, Winston Churchill, The Crossing, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, book I (The Borderland), page 240
    • A pony whinnied a short distance from the hut.1914 October – 1916 July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter XIII, in The Mucker, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published 31 October 1921, →OCLC

whinny meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Kannada

whinny in Tamil

மென்மையாகக் கனைத்தல், மகிழ்ச்சியாகக் கனை, குதிரையின் கனைப்பு, கனைப்பொலி, மகிழ்ச்சியான கனைகுரல்

whinny in Urdu

ہنہنانا

whinny in Kannada

ಕೆನೆ, ಕಿಳಿರು

Examples of whinny in a sentence

  • Whinnying it went to a stand of sweet grass ang began pulling them out by the clumpful.
  • And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues.
  • Beholding his waddlesome approach out of the tail of her eye, the white animal would whinny a dignified and conservative welcome.

All 11 example sentences with whinny

Forms of whinny

Noun
pluralwhinnies
alternative formwhinney
Verb
third-person singular presentwhinnies
present participlewhinnying
past participlewhinnied
pastwhinnied

Origin of whinny

From Middle English whynyen, whinien, akin to Middle English whinen (“to whine”).

Words that rhyme with whinny

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about whinny

What does whinny mean?
Whinny means a gentle neigh.
What is whinny in Tamil?
Whinny in Tamil is மென்மையாகக் கனைத்தல், மகிழ்ச்சியாகக் கனை, குதிரையின் கனைப்பு. See Whinny meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is whinny?
Whinny can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce whinny?
Whinny is pronounced /ˈwɪni/.
What is the plural of whinny?
The plural of whinny is whinnies.

Words near whinny in the dictionary

  1. whinners
  2. whinnied
  3. whinnies
  4. whinnock
  5. whinnocks
  6. whinny
  7. whinnying
  8. whinnyingly
  9. whinnyings
  10. whins
  11. WHINSEC

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whinny (page history and authors); whinny (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); whinny (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); whinny (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-whinny.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-whinny.wav.

Cite this entry: “whinny.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whinny. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.