What's the difference between whimper and whine?

Whimper


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To cry with a low, whining, broken voice; to whine; to complain; as, a child whimpers.
  • (v. t.) To utter in alow, whining tone.
  • (n.) A low, whining, broken cry; a low, whining sound, expressive of complaint or grief.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He went with a bang not a whimper: two of his last contributions to the New Republic were a trenchant critique of the history of the six-day war by Michael Oren, now Israeli ambassador to Washington, and an evisceration of Koba the Dread, Martin Amis's purported book on Stalin.
  • (2) The snowman's quest is accompanied by a fey, irritating cover version of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's The Power of Love , in which Holly Johnson is replaced by a breathy chanteuse whimpering at the piano like a dog that needs taking for a walk.
  • (3) On day four you ask for the salad as a main and then, when they refuse, order the duck again with a whimper.
  • (4) If they had come out fighting, we could have fought back; coming out crawling, whimpering at their own inadequacy, all we can do is accept that they've done their best.
  • (5) The catch-22 in this ambition, however, was that nothing serious was likely to go wrong so long as wets such as Walker, James Prior, Francis Pym and Ian Gilmour confined their opposition to her "revolution" to an occasional whimper of dissent.
  • (6) The systematic hacking of social security from this country's most vulnerable has been done with barely a whimper of remorse from the most powerful.
  • (7) Elsewhere, the corpses are swapped for tragedy and the Muttley chuckles turn to whimpers.
  • (8) "Ah just want to sort out the funeral," she blubbed at the preternaturally patient Chesney, overbite quivering like a hovercraft as the prospect of another 15 years of storylines involving the widow whimpering in her HMP Plot Device netball bib lumbered horrifyingly into view.
  • (9) A young title called Bang, from the makers of Classic Rock, closed without a whimper.
  • (10) He was rarely seen on the touchline as Fulham slipped towards their inevitable conclusion with barely a whimper.
  • (11) Homeless and dying, she roams the neighbourhood, whimpering and laughing.
  • (12) She was later to tell police that it was a cold morning and the "abnormally thin" child was whimpering.
  • (13) You'll be too busy whimpering and chewing on your fist.
  • (14) This cycle is broken when a Looper called Joe (played by Brick star Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes face-to-face with a target who won't just kneel there, whimper and die – himself.
  • (15) Though this is not good news, the euro may then actually end: not with a bang, but a whimper.
  • (16) At half-time against Newcastle he implored the players not to end their outstanding season "with a whimper".
  • (17) All of this has been done without even a whimper from the Liberal Democrats, who have lost any remaining vestige of credibility on civil liberties.
  • (18) The annoying thing about political storms like this is that real people are affected, meaning that you can't have too much sport without pausing to remember the whimpering unfortunates who have been on hold to HMPO, assured sincerely and repeatedly of the importance of their call, since last Tuesday.
  • (19) Finally, horribly, whimperingly, his victim said: "I don't know."
  • (20) The results suggested that repetitive hand and finger movements, stereotypic manipulation of objects, and making a face(s) mainly occur within arousal situations whereas eye poking, whimpering, and sucking thumbs or fingers especially are linked to monotony.

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.