whelp
/wɛlp/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.49 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A young offspring of a various carnivores (canid, ursid, felid, pinniped), especially of a dog or a wolf, the young of a bear or similar mammal (lion, tiger, seal); a pup, wolf cub.
noun
A tooth on a sprocket wheel (compare sprocket and cog).
verb
To give birth.
intj
Alternative form of welp (“well”).
Example Sentences
- "[…]And fared like a furious wyld Beare, / Whose whelpes are ſtolne away, ſhe being otherwhere."
- "Pro. […]Then was this Iſland / (Saue for the Son, that he^([sic]) did littour heere, / A frekelld whelpe, hag-borne) not honour'd with / A humane ſhape."
- "July 13, 1713, Joseph Addison, The Guardian That awkward whelp with his money bags would have made his entrance."
- "October 22, 2011, Princess Luna, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "Luna Eclipsed" Thy backside is whole and ungobbled, thou ungrateful whelp!"
- "The bitch whelped."
- "The she-wolf whelped a large litter of cubs."
Etymology
From Middle English whelp, from Old English hwelp, from Proto-West Germanic *hwelp, from Proto-Germanic *hwelpaz (compare Dutch welp, German Welpe, Welfe, Old Norse hvelpr, Norwegian Nynorsk kvelp, Danish hvalp), from pre-Germanic *kʷelbos, of uncertain origin.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: whelp, hwelp, *hwelp, *hwelpaz, whelpen, hwelpian