noun
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a sudden, passing, and often fanciful idea; impulsive or irrational thought
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a horse-drawn winch formerly used in mining to lift ore or water
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of whim
First recorded in 1635–45; short for whim-wham
Explanation
A whim is an odd or fanciful idea, something kooky you suddenly decide to do, like dress up like a chicken or drive to Vegas. A whim can be a sudden impulse or a change of mind, like if you go shopping for school clothes but instead buy a pink cowboy hat. Whim is a shortened version of the equally silly sounding whim wham which means "fanciful object," like a tiny snow globe that plays "Hava Nagila." If you go for a drive on a whim, you could wind up anywhere, perhaps even back to the store to return that snow globe.
Vocabulary lists containing whim
List 6
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Wonder
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100 SAT words Beginning with W,X,Y, and Z
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Bake Off contestant applied for show 'on a whim'
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
The first time Samantha R. went to Burning Man, it was on a whim.
From Salon ● Sep. 11, 2026
Have you noticed that even though your every whim can be satisfied with the tap of a screen, you feel unsatisfied quite a lot of the time?
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2026
The threat to enterprise in a mature democracy is no longer the whim of governments; it is the weight of procedure.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
In the winter of 1926, acting on a whim, he exposed a cohort of flies to an even lower dose of radiation.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Naomi was accustomed to Lisa-Kaindé’s whims long before they became professional artists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
If you bet money on whims and hunches, you’ll pull it right back out based on gut feelings, too.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
It’s just the latest sign that the launch of a whole ecosystem of ETFs has done little to buttress bitcoin against the whims of mercurial investors.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026
A more Zen note was struck by a man named Peter, visiting from California, who does not like Trump but refused to let the president’s whims detract from his D.C. tour.
From Slate ● Jun. 19, 2026
Whose whims had been taken seriously by adults and who grew up to be the stingiest, greediest people on earth and out of their stinginess grew their stingy little love that ate everything in sight.
From "Song of Solomon" by Toni Morrison
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
