whopper

English

Etymology

whop +‎ -er

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɒp.ə(ɹ)/, /ˈʍɒp.ə(ɹ)/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈwɑ.pɚ/, /ˈʍɑ.pɚ/

Noun

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.
   • 1894, Mark Twain, chapter XII, in Tom Sawyer Abroad:

     When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the subject and let him down easy, […]

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all. Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory.

   • 1997 [1990], David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN:

     Isuzu Inc. hit pay dirt in the late '80s with its series of “Joe Isuzu” spots, featuring an oily, Satanic-looking salesman who told whoppers about Isuzu's genuine llama-skin upholstery and ability to run on tapwater.

Derived terms

• belly whopper

 

Translations

something remarkably large

• Afrikaans: knewel
• Albanian: please add this translation if you can
• Bulgarian: нещо огромно (nešto ogromno)
• Czech: macek m
• Danish: please add this translation if you can
• Dutch: knoert (nl) m, joekel (nl) m, kanjer (nl) m, baas (nl), baas (nl)
• Esperanto: please add this translation if you can
• Estonian: please add this translation if you can
• Faroese: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: jätti (fi)
• French: please add this translation if you can
• Galician: please add this translation if you can
• German: Mordsding n, (colloquial) Oschi (de) m, Kaventsmann (de) m (colloquial), Mordsapparat m (colloquial)
• Icelandic: please add this translation if you can
• Khmer: ធំសំបើម (tʰom sɑmbaəm)
• Latvian: milzenis m, milzene f
• Polish: kolos (pl) m, kobyła (pl) f
• Portuguese: colosso (pt) m, grandalhão m
• Romanian: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: грома́дина (ru) f (gromádina)
• Slovak: kolos m
• Spanish: chorro (es) m, montón (es) m, (Mexico) chingo (es) m
• Turkish: okkalı (tr)

outrageous lie

• Bulgarian: опашата лъжа f (opašata lǎža)
• Czech: nehorázná lež
• Dutch: grote leugen m
• Finnish: emävale
• French: énormité (fr)
• German: Lüge (de) f, Lügengeschichte (de) f, enorme Lüge f
• Portuguese: mentirona f
• Romanian: minciună gogonată f
• Russian: гну́сная ложь f (gnúsnaja ložʹ)
• Slovak: neslýchaná lož f
• Spanish: mentira cruel, ponzoña (es) f
• Turkish: palavra (tr) sg

Further reading

• Jonathon Green (2024) “whopper n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang