whistle for

whistle for verb: to request or ask for with no chance of success.

Verb

whistle for (third-person singular simple present whistles for, present participle whistling for, simple past and past participle whistled for)

(idiomatic) To request or ask for with no chance of success.
- If we wanted something we could whistle for it - but if the Australians wanted something you'd got to get it for them, or else.2009, Max Arthur, We Will Remember Them: Voices from the Aftermath of the Great War, →ISBN
- She could whistle for it now; she wouldn't get a penny from him even if she crawled on all fours.2012, Joan Jonker, Walking My Baby Back Home, →ISBN
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see whistle, for.

And if it was milk I was after from that environment I could clearly whistle for it.2014, Tess Read, The Secret Diary of Eric Cowell - Aged 6 1/2 months, →ISBN:
And as for ceilings, you can whistle for them.1973, Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing, →ISBN, page 96:

third-person singular present	whistles for
present participle	whistling for
past participle	whistled for
past	whistled for

What does whistle for mean?: Whistle for means to request or ask for with no chance of success.
How do you use whistle for in a sentence?: And if it was milk I was after from that environment I could clearly whistle for it.
What part of speech is whistle for?: Whistle for is a verb.
What is the past tense of whistle for?: The past tense of whistle for is whistled for.

Adapted from Wiktionary: whistle for (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-whistle for.ogg.

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