American linguist and one of the foremost Sanskrit scholars of his time, noted especially for his classic work, Sanskrit Grammar (1879).

As a professor of Sanskrit (1854–94) and comparative language studies (1869–94) at Yale University, Whitney conducted extensive research and published a number of works. These included editions and translations of the Vedas, the ancient Hindu sacred scriptures, written in the oldest form of Sanskrit. Whitney also contributed to the great Sanskrit dictionary of Otto von Böhtlingk and Rudolf von Roth.

Whitney also served as editor in chief of The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language, 6 vol. (1889–91), which in its time was one of the finest general-purpose dictionaries in the United States. He was also the editor of the 1864 edition of Webster's dictionary. Whitney wrote The Life and Growth of Language (1875; reprinted, 1977), Essentials of English Grammar (1877), and Max Müller and the Science of Linguistics: A Criticism (1892). His Selected Writings, edited by Michael Silverstein, was published in 1971.