different between whin vs whiny

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: w?n, IPA^(key): /w?n/
• (without the wine–whine merger) enPR: hw?n, IPA^(key): /??n/
• Rhymes: -?n
• Homophone: win (accents with the wine-whine merger)

Etymology 1

From Middle English whynne, from Old Norse hvein (“gorse, furze”) (compare Norwegian kvein (“bent grass”), Swedish ven (“bent grass”), dialectal hven (“swamp”)), apparently from hvein (“swampy land”), from Proto-Germanic *hwain?, *hwin- (“swamp; moor”), from Proto-Indo-European *??eyn- (“to soil; mud; filth”). Compare Latin caenum (“filth”), Latin inqu?n? (“to sully; soil”).

Noun

whin (countable and uncountable, plural whins)

1. Gorse; furze (Ulex spp.).
   • 1790, Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter, 1828, Thomas Park (editor), Works of the British Poets, Volume XX: The Poems of Robert Burns, page 65,

     By this time he was cross the ford, / Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd; / And past the birks and meikle stane, / Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; / And through the whins, and by the cairn, / Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn; / And near the thorn, aboon the well, / Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.

   • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song, A Scots Quair, 1995, Canongate Books, page 38,

     And sometimes they clambered down […] and saw the whin bushes climb black the white hills beside them and far and away the blink of lights across the moors where folk lay happed and warm.

2. The plant woad-waxen (Genista tinctoria).

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Gray to this entry?)

Derived terms

• moor whin (Genista anglica)
• needle whin (Genista anglica)
• petty whin (Genista anglica)
• whin bruiser
• whinchat (Saxicola rubetra)
• whin sparrow (Prunella modularis)
• whin thrush (Turdus iliacus)

Further reading

• Ulex on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 2

Noun

whin

1. Whinstone.

Anagrams

• HNWI

Middle English

Verb

whin

1. (Northern) Alternative form of winnen (“to win”)

English

Etymology

whine +? -y

Pronunciation

• enPR: w?n?i, IPA^(key): /?wa?ni/
• Rhymes: -a?ni
• Homophone: winy (in accents with the wine-whine merger)

Adjective

whiny (comparative whinier, superlative whiniest)

1. whining; tending to whine or complain.

Translations