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by CamperBob2 818 days ago
"Whinge" is just a plain old misspelling of "Whine," nothing more or less. We don't need "Whinge" to become a word; we already have "Whine."
2 comments

"Whinge" definitively is a word[1] and has existed since old English.

[1] https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=Whing...

Well, it shouldn't be. It's entirely redundant with 'whine'.
Where do you stand on "guarantee" vs "warranty"?

That's not to mention common phrases with a built-in redundancy such as "Cease and desist"? "Face mask"? "Free gift"?

Idiomatic English has lots of redundancies of one kind or another.

Those aren't really redundant, though. I can say, "I guarantee that this product will work," but nobody would say, "I warranty that this product will work." (You could argue that guarantee is redundant with warrant, but the police don't go to the judge to request a search guarantee. Both words are needed.)

I can't think of a single use case for whinge that wouldn't be equally satisfied by whine. Can you?

I can't think of a single use case for nought that wouldn't be equally satisfied by "zero". Or courgette that wouldn't be satisfied by zuchini, or both of those by "baby marrow". Or why use "oregano" when you could use "wild marjoram"? A perfectly good English name that has been largely displaced by an Italian word.

English (as all modern languages) has tons and tons of exact synonyms and other types of redundant words. It's just a normal part of usage.

In this specific case I personally prefer whinge for emphasizing the complaint and whine for emphasising the noise, so I don't really think they are redundant - I think they are slightly different.

No it isn't. What gave you that daft idea?
It's a stupid word, one that we don't need. 'Whine' works just fine. Why was it necessary to add a 'g'?

You can see 'whinge' gaining ground very recently at the expense of 'whine' here:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=whine%2Cwhinge...

This is an outrage, and must be stopped. :-P

no homophones. whine shares a phonemic address with wine, while whinge staked out a plot of its very own, even if its just a slapdash pop-up tent next door to the local drunkard, binge. hinge shares a smartly bricked-up border with both.