Other forms: whelped, whelps, whelping
A whelp is a young dog or wolf. A puppy, in an older and rougher word.
The word is archaic in ordinary speech and survives mostly in writing about animals, where a lioness and a seal both whelp, meaning give birth. As a verb that is its main living use. Applied to a person it is an insult, and calling somebody an insolent whelp means a young upstart, which is the sense you will meet in older novels and in fantasy. Puppy, cub and pup are the everyday words.
WHELP → the young dog that needs HELP
The young dog cannot feed itself yet and needs help with everything.
hooks ontohelp
Proto-Germanic
*hwelpaz
Proto-West Germanic
*hwelp
Old English
hwelp
Middle English
whelp
English, today
whelp
From Middle English whelp, from Old English hwelp, from Proto-West Germanic hwelp, from Proto-Germanic hwelpaz (compare Dutch welp, German Welpe, Welfe, Old Norse hvelpr, Norwegian Nynorsk kvelp, Danish hvalp), from *kʷelbos, of uncertain origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 6 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word