humdinger
English
Etymology
Humdinger is a portmanteau of two words with similar meanings: hummer and dinger. A hummer was something that moved fast or hummed along and the term came into use in the late 1800s referring to machinery such as trains or electric motors. A dinger is something of extraordinary quality.
- 1939, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Penguin, 1951, Chapter 4, p. 28,[1]
- Casy said, “See how good the corn come along until the dust got up. Been a dinger of a crop.”
- 1939, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Penguin, 1951, Chapter 4, p. 28,[1]
The two words were reportedly first combined into “humdinger” in a newspaper article in the Daily Enterprise of June 4, 1883, at Livingstone, Montana. (The 1883 example was discovered by Stephen Goranson and shared on the American Dialect Society mailing list.)
Pronunciation
- Lua error in Module:parameters at line 333: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "UK" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /hʌmˈdɪŋə(ɹ)/
- Rhymes: -ɪŋə(r)
Noun
humdinger (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 (republished 2010), Joseph Heller, Catch-22, London: Vintage Books, ISBN 978-0-09-955218-5, page 22:
- [']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.