English

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Etymology

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From whop +‎ -er.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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whopper (plural whoppers)

  1. (informal) Something remarkably large.
    • 1889, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 17, in Three Men in a Boat [] [1]:
      I’d gone out pike fishing, bless you, never thinking of a trout, and when I saw that whopper on the end of my line, blest if it didn’t quite take me aback. Well, you see, he weighed twenty-six pound.
    • 1910, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “The Poet and the Peasant”, in Strictly Business[2]:
      I’ve just run down from Ulster County to look at the town, bein’ that the hayin’s over with. Gosh! but it’s a whopper. I thought Poughkeepsie was some punkins; but this here town is five times as big.
    • 1939, Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, The Wizard of Oz:
      There's a storm blowing up, Sylvester—a 'whopper', speaking in the vernacular of the peasantry.
  2. (informal) An outrageous or blatant lie.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Further reading

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