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whinge: msg#00009culture.language.word-of-the-day
***************************************************************** Discover the people and events that made history ON THIS DAY. Sign up for the free daily newsletter from Britannica. http://register.britannica.com/mailinglist ***************************************************************** The Word of the Day for September 10 is: whinge \ WINJ\ verb British : to complain fretfully : whine Example sentence; She urged her fellow workers to stop whinging about how they were victims of "the system" and to do something to change that system. Did you know? "Whinge" isn't just a spelling variant of "whine." They are actually entirely different words with different histories. "Whine" traces to an Old English verb, "hwinan," which means "to make a humming or whirring sound." When "hwinan" became "whinen" in Middle English, it meant "to wail distressfully"; "whine" didn't acquire its "complain" sense until the 16th century. "Whinge," on the other hand, comes from a different Old English verb, "hwinsian," which means "to wail or moan discontentedly." "Whinge" retains that original sense today, though nowadays "whinge" puts less emphasis on the sound of the complaining and more on the discontentment behind the complaint. |
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