whimpering

English

Verb

whimpering

1. present participle and gerund of whimper

Noun

whimpering (plural whimperings)

1. The sound of one who whimpers; a whimper; a feeble complaint.
   • 1912, Prospero [pseudonym; Frederick Rolfe], Caliban [pseudonym; Harry Pirie-Gordon], “The Thirteenth Papyrus”, in The Weird of the Wanderer: Being the Papyrus Records of Some Incidents in One of the Previous Lives of Mr. Nicholas Crabbe, London: William Rider & Son, Limited, […], →OCLC, page 128:

     And my sea-birds made a great confusion in the awful calm, filling it with flashing pinions and plaintive whimperings, and settling into the shape of a dome all formed of beating wings, in which I on my ship and the tridentiferous god of the sea were enclosed, face to face.

   • 1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 14:

     As I lay waiting I could hear a sort of murmurousness beyond the door. It seemed composed of whimperings, slitherings, and shufflings, punctuated occasionally by a raised voice in the distance.

Derived terms

• hog-whimpering