Word.ws English Dictionary

whippowill

whippowill is the alternative form of whippoorwill.

Meaning of whippoorwill

Noun

whippoorwill (plural whippoorwills)

  1. A nocturnal insectivorous bird of North America (Antrostomus vociferus, syn. Caprimulgus vociferus), a type of nightjar, named after its characteristic call.
    • “Seems like I heard a whippoorwill callinʼ, and I thought to myself, Go on away from here, weʼll whip ole Will when we find him.”1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Penguin Books (2014), page 55
  2. The distinctive call of the above bird.
    • The bird sang his whippoorwills all night.

Forms of whippowill

pluralwhippowills

Questions about whippowill

What is whippowill the alternative form of?
Whippowill is the alternative form of whippoorwill.

Words near whippowill in the dictionary

  1. whippomorphans
  2. whippomorphs
  3. whippoorwill
  4. whippoorwills
  5. whippos
  6. whippowill
  7. whippowills
  8. Whipps
  9. Whippses
  10. whippy
  11. whipray

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whippowill (page history and authors); whippoorwill (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: “whippowill.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whippowill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.