Other forms: whimpering, whimpers, whimpered
To whimper is to make small frightened or unhappy sounds. The dog whimpered, whimper in his sleep, a soft whimper.
It is quieter than a cry and less controlled than a complaint, and it belongs to dogs, small children and people trying not to make a noise. Eliot's line about the world ending gave the phrase not with a bang but a whimper.
1verbwhimperTo make small frightened or unhappy sounds.
“The puppy whimpered in its box all night because it missed its mother.”
whimper is a sound.
From a dialect word whimp, imitating the sound, plus the -er ending that marks a repeated action.
From dialectal whimp + -er. Compare German wimmern (“to whimper, whine”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA