Word.ws English Dictionary

whiny

/ˈwaɪni/

whiny adjective: whining; tending to whine or complain.

Adjective

whiny (comparative whinier, superlative whiniest)

  1. Whining; tending to whine or complain.
    • She is very whiny; she keeps complaining about trivial things.
    • Mrs. Strakosh is played with a whinier accent than Mrs. Brice.1981 October 5, Haskel Frankel, “ROSALIND HARRIS IN 'FUNNY GIRL'”, in The New York Times
  2. Having a nasally or high-pitched voice.

Examples of whiny in a sentence

  • Rudolph and Stella laugh hysterically as I sing along in a scratchy, whiny Chipmunk voice.
  • Then a high whiny sound, gradually diminishing, a sort of shush, and finally all is quiet.
  • It's too old-fashioned and has, to her mind, a slightly whiny sound, like the twang of a country and western guitar.

All 12 example sentences with whiny

Forms of whiny

comparativewhinier
superlativewhiniest
alternative formwhiney

Origin of whiny

From whine + -y.

Words formed from whiny

Words that rhyme with whiny

Questions about whiny

What does whiny mean?
Whiny means whining; tending to whine or complain.
What part of speech is whiny?
Whiny is an adjective.
How do you pronounce whiny?
Whiny is pronounced /ˈwaɪni/.

Words near whiny in the dictionary

  1. whinnyings
  2. whins
  3. WHINSEC
  4. whinstone
  5. whinstones
  6. whiny
  7. whiny-ass titty babies
  8. whiny-ass titty baby
  9. whinyard
  10. whinyards
  11. whio

Source and license

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

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