an informal figure, usually relating to a valuation or price of some kind, which is not officially shared in order to preserve negotiating flexibility and leverage; it is nonetheless floated quietly among select parties in order to test the waters for a potential transaction, as in “I know they said they don’t want to talk selling price yet, but what’s the whisper number?”; in its original Wall Street usage the term refers to estimates of earnings that are privately known by financial insiders before the public release of corporate reports