What's the difference between wail and whine?

Wail


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To choose; to select.
  • (v. t.) To lament; to bewail; to grieve over; as, to wail one's death.
  • (v. i.) To express sorrow audibly; to make mournful outcry; to weep.
  • (n.) Loud weeping; violent lamentation; wailing.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) You couldn't get much more bohemian than the music playing in this room of tiny round tables, first French crooner Serge Gainsbourg and then cabaret freak Scott Walker wailing of their obelisk-size pain.
  • (2) Every now and then some rich Oga or Madam comes along in their bulletproof cars and wailing sirens, and distorts the delicate equilibrium of this body of traffic.
  • (3) In groups 1 and 2, clusters of cylindrical tubules, typical of the male gland, decreased in number and disappeared almost completely 2 wailed in these two groups throughout the remaining period of experiment.
  • (4) "Barcelona's habit of playing midfielders in defence will do them more harm than good," he wails.
  • (5) "Gnnmph, I can't 'ave it 'ere, I 'aven't 'ad my enema," wails a labouring housewife, straining fruitlessly on a communal tenement bog as horrified neighbours look on in their rollers.
  • (6) There were moments when music seemed to struggle to be heard over the tocking of iPod clickwheels and the wailing of record company executives.
  • (7) The army cleared itself of responsibility for the killing of a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach three weeks ago during an artillery barrage after many Israelis were shaken by television pictures of a traumatised child wailing over the body of her father.
  • (8) While Arsenal fans have spent the last nine years gnashing and wailing, Hull supporters have cheered the incredible resurrection of their club, as David Conn explains here .
  • (9) Some family members, after years of begging for mercy and receiving none, broke down and wailed.
  • (10) The big story Once upon a time the Oscar ceremony was a comforting drone punctuated only by the odd song-and-dance routine and the banshee wailing of overwhelmed best actress award winners.
  • (11) Elsewhere on the carpet Quentin Tarantino is having a bop with Uma Thurman (again), Xavier Dolan is wearing an outrageous tux (again) and the boring normal people at the barriers are wailing for stars' attention (again).
  • (12) Later that night, Lola wailed in the street as the police prised her baby from her arms and led her into custody.
  • (13) Family members who had gathered at a hotel in Beijing wailed as they heard the news.
  • (14) Naderi offered his prayers to Dhu’s family at the end of his evidence, saying: “I wish I was able to pick up any abnormal signs that may have made a difference.” Carol Roe ran crying from the courtroom, her wail flowing back through the door to where Naderi was seated in the witness box.
  • (15) Sorrowful wails and sobs resounded as thousands of Rwandans packed the country's main sports stadium to mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of a devastating 100-day genocide.
  • (16) Sandy breaking out of the compound BB3 Sandy's insistence on his quirkiness got rather wearing, so it was just as well he made a bid for escape, with his new best friend Alex wailing, "Be careful, Sandy, be careful!"
  • (17) Starbucks admitted that while it can (quite incredibly) claim that its 700 UK stores are not profitable, through wails of what seemed like crocodile tears, its 30 coffee traders in Switzerland make an enormous 20% profit margin despite never seeing a coffee bean; a fact that the committee could not have helped noting might be related to the 12% tax it pays in that state.
  • (18) Their players are distraught and making a mess of everything, while the TV producer here is having an absolute ball picking out wailing Brazilians in the crowd.
  • (19) Another shows a scene of villagers wailing with grief: “Villagers grieve as their friend is put into the ambulance,” the voiceover says.
  • (20) Among those who finally decided that Kobani was on the brink was Mukdad Bozan, travelling with his wife, a wailing baby and three bedraggled older children.

Whine


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To utter a plaintive cry, as some animals; to moan with a childish noise; to complain, or to tell of sorrow, distress, or the like, in a plaintive, nasal tone; hence, to complain or to beg in a mean, unmanly way; to moan basely.
  • (v. t.) To utter or express plaintively, or in a mean, unmanly way; as, to whine out an excuse.
  • (n.) A plaintive tone; the nasal, childish tone of mean complaint; mean or affected complaint.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It’s great that the new Star Wars film is more diverse , with John Boyega and Daisy Ridley in significant roles; I am pleased to see everyone on #BoycottStarWarsVII gnash and whine uselessly.
  • (2) You can whine about the politics of this until you are green, white and orange in the face but if you want to learn Irish – and many people do – your best bet is to organise your own classes.
  • (3) Green Day love it The American rock band Green Day are proud champions of Salinger's antihero; their 1994 song Basket Case is a nasally homage in nasally whines.
  • (4) I whine that I haven’t been able to successfully place an order, let alone indicate how i’d like my steak done.
  • (5) So that rightwing free market ideologues can open up all those markets that the US have been whining to the World Trade Organisation about for decades; for some ideological principal that says people should pay less tax and privately fund only the services they need and want, and screw the collective community if they cannot afford to pay their insurance; that puts money in the pockets of the very richest in society, while the very poorest will be expected to step up or die out; that any public provision will not be on the basis of the most needy, but on the basis of who those in control consider to be the most deserving.
  • (6) On 16 November I find another writerly whine: "I feel sucked hollow."
  • (7) "Can you explain to the Whining Yanks that they didn't have a goal disallowed in the match against Slovenia, since the referee clearly blew for what he perceived to be a foul before the ball had reached Edu and ended up in the back of the net," lectures Matt.
  • (8) Whining about cab drivers transcends national boundaries.
  • (9) When you carry on moping, and whining like Charlie Brown after listening to the whole Smiths catalog at every single club you've played, it's hard to believe Tristelme was ever destined for true greatness.
  • (10) He would be watching the dogfights, planes diving and looping, their engines whining, each hurling fire at the other.
  • (11) Effects of diazepam were examined on the whine reaction elicited by LH stimulation and on unit activities in the LH and Abm in cats.
  • (12) The whole show is really just a riff on that well-meaning girl in 1980s Grange Hill whining, "Why do you eat so many sandwiches, Ro-land?"
  • (13) We know we'll get into trouble for it and we're certainly not whining about that."
  • (14) And in the absence of a firm rebuttal, all you can do, as Kerry did and Romney is now doing, is whine.
  • (15) This Fourth of July weekend, we Americans did what we're known for: we grilled meats, whined about air travel, and looked back in fondness at our Founding Fathers who refused to pay their taxes.
  • (16) Their president-elect whining about someone being mean about his restaurant, or gloating over The Apprentice’s ratings dip under Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • (17) As for its leadership, the current choice of new brooms includes a prince from a non-democracy, a South Korean billionaire and Fifa insider who nodded Blatterism through for the best part of two decades before deciding opportunely to speak out (and is now whining about being taken out by the “hitman” that is Blatter’s ethics committee), and Michel Platini , whose reputation appears to have a half-life shorter than most highly radioactive isotopes.
  • (18) As the new Zimbabwe effectively became a one-party state under the gifted but autocratic Mugabe, as terrible droughts undermined the economy and confidence of what was so recently one of the richest and most fertile African countries and as Aids cut a swathe through the population, the old pariah, defiant and bigoted to the last, could not resist saying, with the familiar Smithy whine: "I told you so."
  • (19) She was wolf-reared in Judd Apatow's tumescent-adolescent boy-zone (none of whose denizens is ever cast for his hair colour), but she can take any of those boys to the woodshed for a rhetorical spanking, rich in obscenity and scatology, in that razor-sharp whine.
  • (20) Offensive behaviour, i.e., whine response to a rod presented in front of the snout and blowing air on back hair was markedly observed, and whine, attacking and biting responses to tapping with a rod on the back in these cats were marked.

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