"Whinge" indeed rhymes with "Binge"

Mignon commented on my last post:

"And are you trying to spell whine? Pronounced like the drink? Or a word rhyming with binge (as suggested in your title)?"

I knew then that if she, as an American and thoroughly versed in the intricacies of the English language (as you can see from her own blog at http://openingyourmind.blogspot.com), then "whinge" must be an Australian word.

So I grabbed the "Aussie Slang" Dictionary that my sister Liz sent Phil for Christmas last year. According to the author Sarah Dawson:

Whinge
To complain constantly and irritatingly.
A whinge is the act of doing this, and
a whinger is a person who does so too often.

So there you go. So often I have no idea that a particular word I am using is not a universal English word, but rather an Australian-invented term that I have grown up with, and therefore never realised the world at large was unaware of it. Quite often Phil has simply no idea what I am talking about!