hum vs whistle

hum

noun
  • An often indistinct sound resembling human humming. 

  • Unpleasant odour. 

  • A phenomenon, or collection of phenomena, involving widespread reports of a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming, rumbling, or droning noise not audible to all people. 

  • Busy activity, like the buzz of a beehive. 

  • A hummed tune, i.e. created orally with lips closed. 

intj
  • Synonym of um: a noise indicating doubt, uncertainty, &c. 

  • Synonym of hmm: a noise indicating thought, consideration, &c. 

verb
  • To produce low sounds which blend continuously 

  • To express by humming. 

  • To reek, smell bad. 

  • To make a sound from the vocal chords without pronouncing any real words, with one's lips closed. 

  • To drone like certain insects naturally do in motion, or sounding similarly 

  • To buzz, be busily active like a beehive 

whistle

noun
  • A shrill, high-pitched sound made by whistling. 

  • A device designed to be placed in the mouth and blown, or driven by steam or some other mechanism, to make a whistling sound. 

  • An act of whistling. 

  • Any high-pitched sound similar to the sound made by whistling. 

  • A suit (from whistle and flute). 

  • The mouth and throat; so called as being the organs of whistling. 

verb
  • To make a shrill, high-pitched sound by forcing air through the mouth. To produce a whistling sound, restrictions to the flow of air are created using the teeth, tongue and lips. 

  • To make a similar sound by forcing air through a musical instrument or a pipe etc. 

  • To move in such a way as to create a whistling sound. 

  • To send, signal, or call by a whistle. 

How often have the words hum and whistle occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )