What's the difference between whine and whirr?

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.

Whirr


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The machinery - the spinning gazebo, the train, the paddle-powered airship - whirrs along at the delicate yet exhilarating pace of clockwork.
  • (2) The mind whirrs away, and soon enough the demystification begins.
  • (3) The peculiar percussion in the song's middle-eight – helicopter blade whirrs, and a distant shouting army – sound especially fierce against Michael Stipe's distant, spoken-word testimony.
  • (4) A policewoman hops to the side, to avoid blocking our shot, and there's a chorus of clicks, whirrs and focus beeps.
  • (5) Then West Ham took over, their running, passing and imagination making the visitors look like mere bouncers amid a whirr of party people.
  • (6) Once the wheels began to whirr on Manchester United’s move for Radamel Falcao, with Welbeck told he could leave Old Trafford, the route south became a serious option.
  • (7) With that news still forthcoming, the rumour mill continues to whirr, particularly after Abrams confirmed that he'd had meetings with Jesse Plemons, the American actor known for roles in TV dramas Breaking Bad and Friday Night Lights.
  • (8) Part of the problem, I suspect, is that few of us doubt the behavioural or environmental threats of technology; our endless distractibility, the constant beeps and whirrs and notifications of modern life.
  • (9) Wembley itself was ringed with extra security for the occasion from the whirr of the helicopters parked against the clouds hours before kick-off, to the presence on the usually carefree Wembley Way of knots of armed policemen in bulky protective vests, automatic weapons strapped to their chests.
  • (10) "The population of Mogadishu is regaining confidence," he says as the air conditioner whirrs, dripping water on to sandbags outside his prefab office.
  • (11) But then, with a spiral, pulsing flutter, it grew to a hissing whirr, landing with ferocious blasts, with tremendous thumps and then their echoes, followed by the whine of fragments which cut into the trees, driving white scars in their trunks and filling the air with torn shreds of foliage.
  • (12) In a small-space game the Welshman was a whirr of pace and dribbling as the ball stuck to that famous left boot before up went his arms in mock-jubilation to tease the team-mates who could not dispossess him.
  • (13) Koeman was irritable about that; the time-wasting, which he felt the officials could have done more to stamp out; the disallowed goal; the result and the whirr of transfer speculation which tracked both Mané and Victor Wanyama into the game.