I used the word whiffle today, and thought what an odd word it was. I used to mean some one messing about and wasting time in a harmless, aimless sort of way. Whiffle can mean quite a lot of different things, I discover.
Whiffle can be a sound, like a breath of air, or the soft sound of someone almost snoring, or someone whistling quietly, under their breath maybe, or it can mean to move lightly as if blown by a slight breeze, carried on a waft of air… which I guess ties in with the breathing sense of the word. It might be connected to the word whiff, which is a smell, a scent of something in the air. In a similar way to the use I made of it, it can be to think in an erratic or wandering way, or to move in an erratic or wandering way – very much like something blown on the wind, maybe!
A whiffle can be a gust or puff of wind, a whiffle can be a little flute or pipe or fife; a whiffle can be to wave or shake something – as in a whiffling stick.
I didn’t realise that a whiffling stick can be a sharpening steel; apparently it was the tool of choice for fishermen to sharpen their knives while gutting their catch. In old carving sets, particularly ones given as gifts, there was always a whiffling stick or steel for sharpening the carving knife. Just to confuse you, a whiffling stick can also be the baton or stick a morris man carries when doing his morris dancing. There is a version of baseball which uses a whiffle or wiffle… I guess it must come from the same root as the morris-dancing whiffle.
The last definition I have of whiffle, is that it is an old word for a particular style of military hair cut used in the USA… Does anyone know any more about this?
So whiffle… a puff of air or a weapon… maybe as the whiffle whiffled through the air it made a whiffling sound!
Lois Elsden 