Whelp
intj, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 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.
"[…]And fared like a furious wyld Beare, / Whose whelpes are ſtolne away, ſhe being otherwhere."
- 2 young of any of various canines such as a dog or wolf wordnet
- 3 An insolent youth; a mere child. derogatory
"July 13, 1713, Joseph Addison, The Guardian That awkward whelp with his money bags would have made his entrance."
- 4 A kind of ship. obsolete
- 5 One of several wooden strips to prevent wear on a windlass on a clipper-era ship.
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- 6 A tooth on a sprocket wheel (compare sprocket and cog).
- 1 To give birth. ambitransitive, usually
"The bitch whelped."
- 2 give birth to (a puppy) wordnet
- 1 Alternative form of welp (“well”). alt-of, alternative
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Juda is a lion's whelp: to the prey, my son, thou art gone up: resting thou hast couched as a lion, and as a lioness, who shall rouse him?"
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.
From Middle English whelpen, from Old English hwelpian, derived from hwelp.
Variant of welp.
Related phrases
More for "whelp"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.