eldertongue

Modern English → Old English

Old English word for whistling

2 headwords match “whistling”, ranked by the scoring in the data pipeline. The 2 strongest follow; hwistlung ranks first.

  1. 1

    hwistlung

    score 24

    noun, feminine · strong ō-stem · 4 inflected forms

    whistling — whistling, hissing

    • opens the headword's definition
    • listed as an English descendant
    • has a full inflection table
    Paradigm summary
    nominative singular hwistlung
    genitive singular hwistlunge
    dative singular hwistlunge
    accusative singular hwistlunge
    nominative plural hwistlunga, hwistlunge
    genitive plural hwistlunga
  2. 2

    hwinan

    score 6

    verb · strong class I · 14 inflected forms

    whistling — to make a whistling or whizzing sound

    • appears in the definition
    • has a full inflection table
    • verb: derivation noise is possible
    Paradigm summary
    first-person singular present indicative hwīne
    first-person singular past indicative hwān
    second-person singular present indicative hwīnst
    second-person singular past indicative hwine
    third-person singular present indicative hwīnþ
    third-person singular past indicative hwān

How this ranking works

Scores are computed once, when the site is built, from the Wiktionary data. Every headword whose definitions mention “whistling” gets the points below; the candidates are then sorted by total. The score is shown on each entry above so the order can be checked rather than trusted.

The English word opens the headword's definition+10
It appears later in the first definition+6
It appears in any definition+3
It is in the headword's links+2
It is listed as an English descendant (etymological evidence)+9
The headword has an inflection table+3
Part of speech is a proper noun−5
Part of speech is a verb (-ian derivations are noisy)−3
The headword is an alternative form−6
The first definition is longer than three words−2

A candidate has to be a real headword with its own entry: inflected forms and grammatical terminology (genitive, nominative, preterite, …) never appear here.

Not one of these?

The match may be a different sense of “whistling”, or an inflected form rather than a headword. Look up the form directly — the entry page marks the grammatical case.

Candidates derived from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0). Each entry links to its source page. · CC BY-SA 4.0 and attribution · CC BY-SA 4.0