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whelk.

Certain edible sea snails, especially, any one of numerous species of large marine gastropods belonging to Buccinidae, much used as food in Europe.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/wɛlk//hwɛlkʍɛlk/
  1. Certain edible sea snails, especially, any one of numerous species of large marine gastropods belonging to Buccinidae, much used as food in Europe.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English whelke, a variant of welk, from Old English weoloc, wiloc, wioloc, weluc, from Proto-West Germanic *weluk (compare Middle Dutch willoc, Dutch wulk), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *welH- (“to turn, revolve”) (whence vulva and volute). Unetymological spelling with wh- from the 15th century.

noun/wɛlk//hwɛlkʍɛlk/
  1. Pimple.

    archaic
  2. A stripe or mark; a ridge; a wale.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English whelke, from Old English hwelca (“pustule, swelling”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.