Browse Definitions :

What does “welp” mean — and why do we say it?

Writing for Business

Which is correct?

My mom signed up for WordPress… ___, I guess blogging is officially over.
a. Welp
b. Wellp
c. Whelp


Answer: a.

Explanation:
Oh, you know there are rules for everything, even if we make them up as we go along. And, although it’s not in most dictionaries yet, we’ve pretty much settled on the standard spelling of “welp.” It means the same thing as “well.” The “p” on the end indicates that the speaker has slammed his lips shut.

Here are some examples of its use online:

>Welp, It’s Official: Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn Are Dating
>Welp, Here’s Another Sign That Ben Affleck And Jennifer Garner May Not Be So Happy
>Welp, This Is Officially the Best Lena Dunham Impression Ever

In a fascinating post on Slate.com, Katie Kilkenny provides a lot more information about “welp” than you might think was available. For example:

Welp occurs when someone abruptly closes off the word well—an occurrence known as a bilabial stop, as linguist Ben Zimmer explained to me—and is akin to the similar slang words yep and nope.* That abrupt closure seems to enhance the sense of resignation in the word well when used as an interjection. Welp is a word to use, as one Urban Dictionary definition puts it, “When one feels there is no more to say.”

“Welp” is usually said to come either from Southern dialects or teen culture. That said, should you use it, if all your friends do?

Kilkenny quotes Grant Barrett, co-host of the public radio show A Way With Words:

Give me an American who says well where all others say welp and I’ll reveal that person to be an offworld alien who has failed at fitting in. Probably a lonely alien, too. He’ll need to learn that word if he wants to abruptly start or finish uncomfortable topics, just like the natives.

Welp, that’s about it for this post.

Follow me on Twitter @tao_of_grammar

Dig Deeper on Writing for Business

Networking
Security
CIO
  • innovation management

    Innovation management involves the process of managing an organization's innovation procedure, starting at the initial stage of ...

  • radical innovation

    Radical innovation is an invention that destroys or supplants an existing business model.

  • process mining

    Process mining is a technique that interprets logs from enterprise applications -- like customer resource management (CRM) and ...

HRSoftware
  • employee resource group (ERG)

    An employee resource group is a workplace club or more formally realized affinity group organized around a shared interest or ...

  • employee training and development

    Employee training and development is a set of activities and programs designed to enhance the knowledge, skills and abilities of ...

  • employee sentiment analysis

    Employee sentiment analysis is the use of natural language processing and other AI techniques to automatically analyze employee ...

Customer Experience
  • customer profiling

    Customer profiling is the detailed and systematic process of constructing a clear portrait of a company's ideal customer by ...

  • customer insight (consumer insight)

    Customer insight, also known as consumer insight, is the understanding and interpretation of customer data, behaviors and ...

  • buyer persona

    A buyer persona is a composite representation of a specific type of customer in a market segment.

Close