From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishwhippetwhip‧pet /ˈwɪpɪt/ noun [countable] HBADSa small thin racing dog like a greyhound
Examples from the Corpus
whippet• A tangled ball of dried grass raced back towards Aulef like a whippet bound for home.• Nabokov, who is exceedingly peremptory with all translators of Flaubert, renders this as whippet.• He is telling Larry about his whippets.• It took forty-seven stitches to put that whippet back together but it lived.• I knew him once, I knew the whippets.• He ran, often, up the Heath with the whippets, in the deadest night.• Some men thought more about their whippets or their pigeons - they thought nowt of slinging the wife out on the street.Origin whippet (1600-1700) Probably from whip “to move quickly” 