Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To move or think erratically; vacillate.
- v. To blow in fitful gusts; puff: The wind whiffled through the trees.
- v. To whistle lightly.
- v. To blow, displace, or scatter with gusts of air.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To blow in gusts; hence, to veer about, as the wind.
- To change from one opinion or course to another; use evasions; prevaricate; be fickle or unsteady; waver.
- To trifle; talk idly.
- To disperse with a puff; blow away; scatter.
- To cause to change, as from one opinion or course to another.
- To shake or wave quickly.
- n. A fife.
Wiktionary
- n. A short blow or gust
- n. Something small or insignificant; a trifle.
- v. to blow a short gust
- v. to waffle, talk aimlessly
- v. to waste time
- v. to travel quickly, wizz, whistle, with an accompanying wind-like sound
- v. to descending rapidly from a height once the decision to land has been made, involving fast side-slipping first one way and then the other
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To waver, or shake, as if moved by gusts of wind; to shift, turn, or veer about.
- v. To change from one opinion or course to another; to use evasions; to prevaricate; to be fickle.
- v. To disperse with, or as with, a whiff, or puff; to scatter.
- v. To wave or shake quickly; to cause to whiffle.
- n. A fife or small flute.
Etymologies
- Perhaps frequentative of whiff.
Examples
“Look for a reel with a lightweight, so-called "whiffle" spool, a perforated design that has holes like a Wiffle ball.”
“When his father asked him what they should call the ball, he said "whiffle," for the slang word "whiff," meaning "strike out.”
“Nobody can use his fists without being taught the use of them by those who have themselves been taught, no more than any one can "whiffle" without being taught by a master of the art.”
“Nobody can use his fists without being taught the use of them by those who have themselves been taught, no more than anyone can 'whiffle' {355} without being taught by a master of the art.”
“It comes as a faint shock to realize that words in everyday use (at least on this side of the Atlantic) such as whiffle, galumph, burble, and chortle, were invented by him in "Jabberwocky" (and glossed by him as "portmanteau" words -- a term that has also passed into accepted usage).”
“It's a quirky, wristy, vertical and extremely violent motion that he hasn't fiddled with much since he figured out how to make whiffle balls curve in both directions around his boyhood home in rural Florida.”
“They could just play whiffle ball and eat ham sandwiches for awhile, and then one day theyd wake up adults.”
A Conversation with Karen Russell author of St. Lucys Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
“There are other significant toys I would put up against Premo's whiffle ball any day.”
The Huffington Post: Red Room: Fran Moreland Johns: Your Stuff as 'Art'
“While she waited for a donor heart, her doctors made sure she walked and played whiffle ball in the hospital play area to regain her strength.”
“My 8-year-old son and I walk in step with Mr. Palmer, outside the ropes of course, as I share stories with my only son about how I grew up watching the great Mr. Palmer and mimicking his famous hitching of the slacks before hitting my whiffle ball onto the "green" in my parents 'backyard.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘whiffle’.
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my fab list
blowsabella, aperçu, froideur, salubrious, abject, gallipot, mumchance, wainscot, virago, macerate, lascivious, clandestine and 181 more...
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CCle
all those wonderful Britsy words that end with a double consonant followed by 'le'
doddle, bobble, dibble, whiffle, waffle, diddle, piddle, jiggle, straggle, boggle, fiddle, skeedaddle and 122 more...
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[Open] Frequentative
“A verb which denotes the frequent occurrence or repetition of an action, as . . . waggle from wag.” — Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia.
Other examples include bobble (bob), bustle (b...dartle, stutter, agitate, dabble, waggle, aid, argue, daunt, expect, excite, espouse, dictate and 77 more...
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