"whee" meaning in English

See whee in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Interjection

IPA: /wiː/ Audio: en-us-whee.ogg [General-American]
Rhymes: -iː Head templates: {{en-interj}} whee
  1. (childish) An expression of pleasure or enjoyment, mostly from rapid physical motion. Tags: childish Synonyms (childish expression of enjoyment): whoopee, yay, yeah, yippee Translations (expression of pleasure or enjoyment): ui (Catalan), ouais (note: with the i repeated as often as desired) (French), ih ih (Italian), oba (Portuguese), ji (Spanish), viva (Spanish), hurra (Spanish), tjoho (Swedish)
    Sense id: en-whee-en-intj-LuEujUkg Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Verb

IPA: /wiː/ Audio: en-us-whee.ogg [General-American] Forms: whees [present, singular, third-person], wheeing [participle, present], wheed [participle, past], wheed [past]
Rhymes: -iː Head templates: {{en-verb}} whee (third-person singular simple present whees, present participle wheeing, simple past and past participle wheed)
  1. (intransitive) To make a high-pitched sound. Tags: intransitive
    Sense id: en-whee-en-verb-45nF7clC
  2. (intransitive, informal) To cry whee. Tags: informal, intransitive
    Sense id: en-whee-en-verb-pYlQGsLt
  3. (transitive, US, colloquial, dated, often with up) To excite, to arouse, to energize. Tags: US, colloquial, dated, often, transitive, with-up
    Sense id: en-whee-en-verb-1tEzk5Mp Categories (other): American English

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for whee meaning in English (6.2kB)

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "whee",
      "name": "en-interj"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "intj",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2000, Bob Foster, Birdum or Bust!, Henley Beach, SA: Seaview Press, page 175",
          "text": "Up came the revs again, slam the door shut, kick the stick off the throttle and up through the gears, down the others side! Whee! Made it again!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001, Ricardo L Garcia, Coal camp days: a boy's remembrance",
          "text": "She twisted the rubber band extra tight. Sure enough, the tractor spun off much faster. Whee! She really liked to see it go fast on the living room floor.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Phil and Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius, Volume 9, page 81",
          "text": "It'll be a secret! Whee!",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An expression of pleasure or enjoyment, mostly from rapid physical motion."
      ],
      "id": "en-whee-en-intj-LuEujUkg",
      "links": [
        [
          "childish",
          "childish"
        ],
        [
          "expression",
          "expression#English"
        ],
        [
          "pleasure",
          "pleasure#English"
        ],
        [
          "enjoyment",
          "enjoyment#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(childish) An expression of pleasure or enjoyment, mostly from rapid physical motion."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "sense": "childish expression of enjoyment",
          "word": "whoopee"
        },
        {
          "sense": "childish expression of enjoyment",
          "word": "yay"
        },
        {
          "sense": "childish expression of enjoyment",
          "word": "yeah"
        },
        {
          "sense": "childish expression of enjoyment",
          "word": "yippee"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "childish"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "ca",
          "lang": "Catalan",
          "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
          "word": "ui"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "note": "with the i repeated as often as desired",
          "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
          "word": "ouais"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
          "word": "ih ih"
        },
        {
          "code": "pt",
          "lang": "Portuguese",
          "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
          "word": "oba"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
          "word": "ji"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
          "word": "viva"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
          "word": "hurra"
        },
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
          "word": "tjoho"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/wiː/"
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-iː"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "oui"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "we"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "wee"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "Wii"
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-whee.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b4/En-us-whee.ogg/En-us-whee.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/En-us-whee.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (GA)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "whee"
}

{
  "categories": [],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "whees",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "wheeing",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "wheed",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "wheed",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "whee (third-person singular simple present whees, present participle wheeing, simple past and past participle wheed)",
      "name": "en-verb"
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1745, Ornithologia Nova; or a New General History of Birds, volume 2, “The nightingale”, page 286",
          "text": "What a wheeing dost thou keep, / Thou Minion of the Spring, / All the Winter long you sleep, / And all the Summer long you sing.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1970, Philip José Farmer, The Mad Goblin",
          "text": "Bullets ricocheted off the walls and the ceiling, wheeing by him, and his face stung from chips of stone.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To make a high-pitched sound."
      ],
      "id": "en-whee-en-verb-45nF7clC",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive) To make a high-pitched sound."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "intransitive"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2014, Bernard De Koven, A Playful Path, page 172",
          "text": "Sometimes, we whee together, at the same time, for the same reason, feeling the same thing. And sometimes – these are the best of times – we can’t really tell who started the whee, or who’s wheeing more.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To cry whee."
      ],
      "id": "en-whee-en-verb-pYlQGsLt",
      "links": [
        [
          "cry",
          "cry"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, informal) To cry whee."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal",
        "intransitive"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1952, Irving Marsh, Edward Ehre, Best Sports Stories, published 1952, page 146",
          "text": "In Princeton marches of eighty-seven, sixty, seventy-six, fifty-two, fifty-eight, thirty-two and sixty-two yards, in which he had the whole-hearted support of a wheed-up Tiger team, Kazmaier passed for three touchdowns, thirty-three and forty-five yards to wingback Dick Pivirotto, four yards to end Len Lyon.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1957 November 18, “Scoreboard”, in Sports Illustrated",
          "text": "Los Angeles Rams, wheed up by 102,368, largest crowd ever to watch NFL game, who jampacked Coliseum, controlled San Francisco's Y. A. Tittle, gave own Norm Van Brocklin plenty of passing room to upset Western Division-leading 49ers 37-24[…]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To excite, to arouse, to energize."
      ],
      "id": "en-whee-en-verb-1tEzk5Mp",
      "links": [
        [
          "excite",
          "excite"
        ],
        [
          "arouse",
          "arouse"
        ],
        [
          "energize",
          "energize"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive, US, colloquial, dated, often with up) To excite, to arouse, to energize."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "colloquial",
        "dated",
        "often",
        "transitive",
        "with-up"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/wiː/"
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-iː"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "oui"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "we"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "wee"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "Wii"
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-whee.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b4/En-us-whee.ogg/En-us-whee.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/En-us-whee.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (GA)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "whee"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English 1-syllable words",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English interjections",
    "English lemmas",
    "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "English terms with homophones",
    "English verbs",
    "Rhymes:English/iː",
    "Rhymes:English/iː/1 syllable"
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "whee",
      "name": "en-interj"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "intj",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English childish terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2000, Bob Foster, Birdum or Bust!, Henley Beach, SA: Seaview Press, page 175",
          "text": "Up came the revs again, slam the door shut, kick the stick off the throttle and up through the gears, down the others side! Whee! Made it again!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001, Ricardo L Garcia, Coal camp days: a boy's remembrance",
          "text": "She twisted the rubber band extra tight. Sure enough, the tractor spun off much faster. Whee! She really liked to see it go fast on the living room floor.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Phil and Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius, Volume 9, page 81",
          "text": "It'll be a secret! Whee!",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An expression of pleasure or enjoyment, mostly from rapid physical motion."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "childish",
          "childish"
        ],
        [
          "expression",
          "expression#English"
        ],
        [
          "pleasure",
          "pleasure#English"
        ],
        [
          "enjoyment",
          "enjoyment#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(childish) An expression of pleasure or enjoyment, mostly from rapid physical motion."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "childish"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/wiː/"
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-iː"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "oui"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "we"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "wee"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "Wii"
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-whee.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b4/En-us-whee.ogg/En-us-whee.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/En-us-whee.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (GA)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "sense": "childish expression of enjoyment",
      "word": "whoopee"
    },
    {
      "sense": "childish expression of enjoyment",
      "word": "yay"
    },
    {
      "sense": "childish expression of enjoyment",
      "word": "yeah"
    },
    {
      "sense": "childish expression of enjoyment",
      "word": "yippee"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "ca",
      "lang": "Catalan",
      "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
      "word": "ui"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "note": "with the i repeated as often as desired",
      "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
      "word": "ouais"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
      "word": "ih ih"
    },
    {
      "code": "pt",
      "lang": "Portuguese",
      "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
      "word": "oba"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
      "word": "ji"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
      "word": "viva"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
      "word": "hurra"
    },
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "sense": "expression of pleasure or enjoyment",
      "word": "tjoho"
    }
  ],
  "word": "whee"
}

{
  "categories": [
    "English 1-syllable words",
    "English interjections",
    "English lemmas",
    "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "English terms with homophones",
    "English verbs",
    "Rhymes:English/iː",
    "Rhymes:English/iː/1 syllable"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "whees",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "wheeing",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "wheed",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "wheed",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "whee (third-person singular simple present whees, present participle wheeing, simple past and past participle wheed)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English intransitive verbs",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1745, Ornithologia Nova; or a New General History of Birds, volume 2, “The nightingale”, page 286",
          "text": "What a wheeing dost thou keep, / Thou Minion of the Spring, / All the Winter long you sleep, / And all the Summer long you sing.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1970, Philip José Farmer, The Mad Goblin",
          "text": "Bullets ricocheted off the walls and the ceiling, wheeing by him, and his face stung from chips of stone.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To make a high-pitched sound."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive) To make a high-pitched sound."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "intransitive"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English informal terms",
        "English intransitive verbs",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2014, Bernard De Koven, A Playful Path, page 172",
          "text": "Sometimes, we whee together, at the same time, for the same reason, feeling the same thing. And sometimes – these are the best of times – we can’t really tell who started the whee, or who’s wheeing more.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To cry whee."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "cry",
          "cry"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, informal) To cry whee."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal",
        "intransitive"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English dated terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English transitive verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1952, Irving Marsh, Edward Ehre, Best Sports Stories, published 1952, page 146",
          "text": "In Princeton marches of eighty-seven, sixty, seventy-six, fifty-two, fifty-eight, thirty-two and sixty-two yards, in which he had the whole-hearted support of a wheed-up Tiger team, Kazmaier passed for three touchdowns, thirty-three and forty-five yards to wingback Dick Pivirotto, four yards to end Len Lyon.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1957 November 18, “Scoreboard”, in Sports Illustrated",
          "text": "Los Angeles Rams, wheed up by 102,368, largest crowd ever to watch NFL game, who jampacked Coliseum, controlled San Francisco's Y. A. Tittle, gave own Norm Van Brocklin plenty of passing room to upset Western Division-leading 49ers 37-24[…]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To excite, to arouse, to energize."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "excite",
          "excite"
        ],
        [
          "arouse",
          "arouse"
        ],
        [
          "energize",
          "energize"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(transitive, US, colloquial, dated, often with up) To excite, to arouse, to energize."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "colloquial",
        "dated",
        "often",
        "transitive",
        "with-up"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/wiː/"
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-iː"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "oui"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "we"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "wee"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "Wii"
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-whee.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b4/En-us-whee.ogg/En-us-whee.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/En-us-whee.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (GA)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "whee"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-01 using wiktextract (0b52755 and 5cb0836). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.