whopper

whop +‎ -er

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

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

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

whopper (plural whoppers)

1. (informal) Something remarkably large.
   • 1889, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 17, in Three Men in a Boat ‎:

     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:

     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.

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