whelp

From Middle English whelp, from Old English hwelp, from Proto-Germanic *hwelpaz (compare Dutch welp, German Welpe, Norwegian Nynorsk kvelp), from pre-Germanic *kʷelbos.

• IPA^(key): /wɛlp/
• (without the wine–whine merger) IPA^(key): /hwɛlp/
• Rhymes: -ɛlp
• Homophone: welp (in accents with the wine-whine merger)

whelp (plural whelps)

1. A young offspring of a 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.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.11:

     […] And fared like a furious wyld Beare, / Whose whelpes are ſtolne away, ſhe being otherwhere.

   • 1610–1611, William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act I, scene ii], page 4:

     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.

2. (derogatory) An insolent youth; a mere child.
   • Addison

     That awkward whelp with his money bags would have made his entrance.

3. (obsolete) A kind of ship.
4. One of several wooden strips to prevent wear on a windlass on a clipper-era ship.
5. A tooth on a sprocket wheel (compare sprocket and cog).

• fox whelp, fox-whelp, fox's whelp (foxling)
• (Newfoundland) whelping ice
• whelpling
• wolf whelp, wolf-whelp, wolf's whelp

• Guelf, Guelph
• Welf
• Welfe
• Welpe

whelp (third-person singular simple present whelps, present participle whelping, simple past and past participle whelped)

1. (transitive, intransitive, of she-dog, she-wolf, vixen, etc.) To give birth.

   The bitch whelped.

   The she-wolf whelped a large litter of cubs.

Variant of welp.

whelp

1. Alternative form of welp (“well”)

• (Early ME) hwelp, hweolp, whellp, ȝwelp
• welp, whelpe, welpe, quelp, quelpe, qwelp, qwelpe

From Old English hwelp, from Proto-Germanic *hwelpaz.

• IPA^(key): /ʍɛlp/
• (dialectal) IPA^(key): /wɛlp/, /xʍɛlp/

whelp (plural whelpes)

1. A whelp (a puppy or a baby dog)
2. A whelp (the young of other animals, especially canids and felids)
3. A whelp (as an insulting term)
4. (rare) A unknown kind of mechanical machine or system.

• whelpen
• whelpynge

• English: whelp
• Scots: whalp, whaulp

• “whelp (n.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-09-09.