whee

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wiː/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iː
• Homophones: oui, we, wee, Wii

Interjection

whee

1. (childish) An expression of pleasure or enjoyment, mostly from rapid physical motion.
   • 2000, Bob Foster, Birdum or Bust!, Henley Beach, SA: Seaview Press, page 175:

     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!

   • 2001, Ricardo L Garcia, Coal camp days: a boy's remembrance:

     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.

   • 2009, Phil and Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius, Volume 9, page 81:

     It'll be a secret! Whee!

Synonyms

• (childish expression of enjoyment): whoopee, yay, yeah, yippee

Translations

expression of pleasure or enjoyment

• Catalan: ui (ca)
• French: ouais (with the i repeated as often as desired)
• Italian: ih ih
• Portuguese: oba (pt)
• Spanish: ji (es), viva (es), hurra (es)
• Swedish: tjoho

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.
   • 1745, Ornithologia Nova; or a New General History of Birds‎^[1], volume 2, “The nightingale”, page 286:

     What a wheeing dost thou keep, / Thou Minion of the Spring, / All the Winter long you sleep, / And all the Summer long you sing.

   • 1970, Philip José Farmer, The Mad Goblin:

     Bullets ricocheted off the walls and the ceiling, wheeing by him, and his face stung from chips of stone.

2. (intransitive, informal) To cry whee.
   • 2014, Bernard De Koven, A Playful Path‎^[2], page 172:

     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.

3. (transitive, US, colloquial, dated, often with up) To excite; to arouse; to energize.
   • 1952, Irving Marsh, Edward Ehre, Best Sports Stories, published 1952, page 146:

     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.

   • 1957 November 18, “Scoreboard”, in Sports Illustrated‎^[3]:

     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 […]

Anagrams

• hewe