whistle-blow
whistle-blow verb: to blow the whistle (on); to report (as a whistleblower).
Verb
whistle-blow (third-person singular simple present whistle-blows, present participle whistle-blowing, simple past whistle-blew, past participle whistle-blown)
- To blow the whistle (on); to report (as a whistleblower).
- It was at this point that 46 (77%) of the participants whistleblew (in writing) on the cheating confederate.2002, Kipling D. Williams, Ostracism: The Power of Silence, →ISBN, page 201
- Students who had whistle-blown in the past provided fewer reasons not to whistle-blow than other students.2012, Cynthia Jeffrey, Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics, →ISBN, page 215
Forms of whistle-blow
| third-person singular present | whistle-blows |
|---|---|
| present participle | whistle-blowing |
| past | whistle-blew |
| past participle | whistle-blown |
| alternative form | whistleblow |
Origin of whistle-blow
Back-formation from whistleblowing or whistleblower, equivalent to whistle + blow.
Questions about whistle-blow
- What does whistle-blow mean?
- Whistle-blow means to blow the whistle (on); to report (as a whistleblower).
- What part of speech is whistle-blow?
- Whistle-blow is a verb.
- What is the past tense of whistle-blow?
- The past tense of whistle-blow is whistle-blew.
Words near whistle-blow in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: whistle-blow (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:
Cite this entry: “whistle-blow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whistle-blow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.