whinny

• whinney

From Middle English whynyen, whinien, akin to Middle English whinen (“to whine”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈwɪni/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Homophone: Winnie
• Rhymes: -ɪni

whinny (plural whinnies)

1. A gentle neigh.
   • 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Enid”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, pages 85–86:

     And moving out they found the stately horse, / Who now no more a vassal to the thief, / But free to stretch his limbs in lawful fight, / Neigh'd with all gladness as they came, and stoop'd / With a low whinny toward the pair: […]

whinny (third-person singular simple present whinnies, present participle whinnying, simple past and past participle whinnied)

1. (transitive, intransitive, of a horse) To make a gentle neigh.
   • 1904 May, Winston Churchill, The Crossing, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, book I (The Borderland), page 240:

     Cattle lowed here and there, and horses whinnied to be fed.

   • 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter XIII, in The Mucker‎, All-Story Cavalier Weekly:

     A pony whinnied a short distance from the hut.

   • 2014 January 28, Will Self, “John Gray: Forget everything you know”, in Independent‎, retrieved March 3, 2021:

     [John Gray] whinnies like a donnish Houyhnhnm[.]