whelp
/wɛlp/ noun, verb
Forms whelps whelping whelped
- 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 (derogatory) An insolent youth; a mere child.
- noun (obsolete) A kind of ship.
- noun One of several wooden strips to prevent wear on a windlass on a clipper-era ship.
- noun A tooth on a sprocket wheel (compare sprocket and cog).
- verb (ambitransitive, of she-dog, she-wolf, vixen, etc.) To give birth. “The bitch whelped.”
Synonyms
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.
Webster’s 1913
- noun One of the young of a dog or a beast of prey; a puppy; a cub; as, a lion's whelps. "A bear robbed of her whelps." 2 Sam. xvii. 8.
- noun A child; a youth; --jocosely or in contempt.
- verb To bring forth young; --said of the female of the dog and some beasts of prey.
- verb To bring forth, as cubs or young; to give birth to. Unless she had whelped it herself, she could not have loved a thing better. B. Jonson.
Etymology [AS. hwelp; akin to D. welp, G. & OHG. welf, Icel. hvelpr, Dan. hvalp, Sw. valp.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “whelp”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details