whelp.
A young offspring of a various carnivores (canid, ursid, felid, pinniped), especially of a dog or a wolf, the young of a bear or similar mammal (lion, tiger, seal); a pup, wolf cub.
Meaning & usage
A young offspring of a various carnivores (canid, ursid, felid, pinniped), especially of a dog or a wolf, the young of a bear or similar mammal (lion, tiger, seal); a pup, wolf cub.
An insolent youth; a mere child.
A kind of ship.
One of several wooden strips to prevent wear on a windlass on a clipper-era ship.
A tooth on a sprocket wheel (compare sprocket and cog).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English whelp, from Old English hwelp, from Proto-West Germanic *hwelp, from Proto-Germanic *hwelpaz (compare Dutch welp, German Welpe, Welfe, Old Norse hvelpr, Norwegian Nynorsk kvelp, Danish hvalp), from pre-Germanic *kʷelbos, of uncertain origin.
To give birth.
The bitch whelped.
The she-wolf whelped a large litter of cubs.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English whelpen, from Old English hwelpian, derived from hwelp.
Alternative form of welp (“well”).
Where this word comes from
Variant of welp.
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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.