whin

English

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whin^¹

/wɪn/
/ʍɪn/

Sounds like win (wine–whine merger) · Rhymes with -ɪn

Where it comes from

From Middle English whynne, from Old Norse hvein (“gorse, furze”) (compare Norwegian kvein (“bent grass”), Swedish ven (“bent grass”), dialectal hven (“swamp”)), apparently from hvein (“swampy land”), from Proto-Germanic *hwainō, *hwin- (“swamp; moor”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱweyn- (“to soil; mud; filth”). Compare Latin caenum (“filth”), Latin inquīnō (“to sully; soil”).

noun whins

countable, uncountable Gorse; furze (Ulex spp.). 1790, Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter, 1828, Thomas Park (editor), Works of the British Poets, Volume XX: The Poems of Robert Burns, page 65, By this time he was cross the ford, / Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd; / And past the birks and meikle stane, / Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; / A
countable, uncountable The plant woad-waxen (Genista tinctoria).

whin^²

/wɪn/
/ʍɪn/

Sounds like win (wine–whine merger) · Rhymes with -ɪn

noun

Whinstone.

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MLA

"whin." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/whin. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

whin. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/whin

Chicago

"whin." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/whin.

BibTeX

@misc{whin_2026,
  title = {whin},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/whin},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}