Can someone please, please tell me why people online write “Welp,” when they mean “Well,” ? It really bugs me, and I tried googling which just gives me pages and pages of people saying it, and no one explaining. It can’t be a typo, can it? Then it would be Wepp, right? Once you have your finger on the L, there’s no reason to move it to the P!! There’s no reason! I was close to putting this in the Pit, but trying to find the answer has beaten me down so much that I’m not angry, just weary.
It’s a regionalism–I think it’s fairly common in the American southeast.
It’s a common deliberate mispronounciation. The “p” adds a useful plosive separation between the introductory interjection and the rest of the sentence.
I life in Florida and have never seen or heard of “welp”, but already it pisses me off.
Right up there with “yeppers” and “you betchum” on the list of “terms we didn’t know we needed.”
It’s a very cutesy form of “well.” The P, in my experience, is not usually spoken as a plosive. I don’t know the linguistic term for it, but it is essentially a P without passing air through your lips. Make the sound of the P at the end of the word, but keep your lips shut. It’s a very…final…sound.
“Welp, I guess that’s about it!”
Welp now “welp” is just a bad case of tangle fingers on the keyboard. 
This post is first time I’ve run across welp on the web. What kind of sites do you frequent to find this poor spelling? :dubious:
When I say it out loud, it’s equivalent of a clipped, tired “Well,” followed immediately by a somewhat forceful sigh. It’s a sound I’m used to people making when they may have eaten too much or perhaps had one drink too many and think it’s about time to settle the check and go home.
No, spingears, it’s not. It reflects a common pronunciation of the word. People say it around here, anyway. The “no passage of air” thing refers to the fact that it’s not aspirated the way many /p/ sounds are in English. It’s just basically closing your mouth as you finish off the word. I dunno the origins of it, and I’ve never actually seen it in writing before, but I certainly hear it.