humdinger
English
editEtymology
editUS origin, perhaps a blend of hummer (“something that moves fast”) + dinger (“something outstanding”). First attested in a newspaper article in the Daily Enterprise of June 4, 1883, at Livingston, Montana.
Pronunciation
editNoun
edithumdinger (plural humdingers)
- (informal) Something that is particularly outstanding, unusual, or exceptional.
- Most of the questions were pretty easy, but that last one was a humdinger.
- 1961, Joseph Heller, Catch-22, London: Vintage Books, published 2010, →ISBN, page 22:
- “—immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman.” “Superman?” Clevinger cried. “Superman?” “Supraman,” Yossarian corrected.
- 2011 July 19, Robbie Brown, “Arkansas Town Draws a Line on Clubs”, in New York Times[1]:
- “I’ve seen some humdingers, but never any ordinance like this,” said Mark Hayes, general counsel for the Arkansas Municipal League, an organization for towns and cities.
Further reading
edit- “humdinger”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “humdinger”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.