whomper

plural whompers

1. slangOne who or that which whomps.First known use 20th c.

   (Orson Oliphant landed in a town full of whap-whompers and stamp-stompers. They whomped and stomped one another every day. It was a hard place to be happy, mostly.)

   2009, Katherine Hannigan, Emmaline and the Bunny, Greenwillow Books, →ISBN, page 83

   5 more examples

   A magazine columnist found proof of this some time ago when he printed an item stating that Richard Widmark was not at all a hard guy, but a gentle, scholarly chap who wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone an old lady. […] Fans wrote in by the hundreds calling the columnist a liar, demanding retraction, and vowing that they had actual proof that Richard was ‘by nature a woman-whomper and tougher than Mike Mazurki.

   1952 August 29, William Barbour, “They Want Him Bad”, in Modern Screen, volume 45, number 3, page 42

   “I see a quick light in many a^([sic]) eye here. And well you might look smart, for these two beauties is bear killers, wolf whompers and gut rippers made with my own hands.[…]”

   1962, Bruce Palmer, John Clifford Giles, Horseshoe Bend, New York: Simon and Schuster, page 197

   “A whomper, a weirdo, and a crazie,” Wally answered, reciting the nicknames they’d given Eddie, Beth, and Caroline—Eddie, for the way she could hit a ball; Beth, for the kind of books she read; and Caroline, for turning everything that ever happened to her into a movie.

   1993, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, The Girls Get Even, Yearling Books, →ISBN, page 15

   “Why don’t I have Ox sharpen his axe?” Sorgan suggested. “It sort of sounds to me like maybe it’s ‘whomp’ time again.” “It probably would solve some problems, Dahlaine,” Zelana agreed, “and Ox is probably one of the best whompers available to us.”

   2005 August 29, David Eddings, Leigh Eddings, Crystal Gorge, Warner Books, →ISBN, page 227

   I can't decide. Did Ryan Howard have the greatest year any 199-strikeout whiff machine ever had? Or did he have the roughest year any 48-homer whomper ever had? Hey, you've got me. You figure it out.

   2009, Jason Stark, “One Win Away”, in Worth the Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies, Chicago, Illinois: Triumph Books, →ISBN, page 186

2. colloquialA whopper; something remarkably large or intense.First known use 20th c.

   You are drinking a frosty bear and wearing big furry whompers on your feet

   2011, Sarah Feldbloom, “At the Klondike Bar”, in Helen Walsh, editor, Tok: Book 6, Zephyr Press, →ISBN, page 132

   5 more examples

   They stretched her between them so that it all hung out, and then, swinging her chest over the faces of the unconscious, they tried to tit everybody awake. She had hogans, two turgid glands of them. Real whompers. Her tits cascaded all over their faces like soft, brown punching bags.

   1973, Mark McGarrity, Lucky Shuffles, Grossman Publishers, →ISBN, page 96

   De only modern convenience dat dey got is dem old strips of auto tire dat dey wears for shoes when dey comes up to Georgetown, what dey calls "whompers." Dat right, Wodie?

   1975, Peter Matthiessen, Far Tortuga, Random House, →ISBN, page 239

   "Not much. All she has to do is sing and flop those big old whompers of hers around and she gets everything she ever wanted — money, recording contracts, TV, the works. Maybe even me for a while, if she plays her cards right."

   1989 January 29, Bernard Schopen, The Big Silence, The Mysterious Press, →ISBN, page 184

   It is the second week of December, and we are about to get a whomper. “Blizzard of the decade,” said ok Jay Moore in the Morning on Moose Country 106.7, […]

   2012, Michael Perry, Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace, Harper, →ISBN, page 171

   "Oh! Well, I was thinking, on the whole, I prefer the rain to the snow." "Ah. We do have a lot of rain in winter here, and usually not much snow, though two years ago there was a whomper."

   2013, Risa Stephanie Bear, Starvation Ridge, Stony Run Press, →ISBN, page 169

1. colloquialnot comparableuncommonLarge or intense; great; bumper.

   You got a caterer? I got a whomper raise. […]

   2005, T. M. McNelly, The Goat Bridge, University of Michigan Press, →ISBN, page 213

   2 more examples

   Becca's cheeks were pale, her eyes smudged. After the whomper headache she'd had yesterday, Mia sympathized.

   2006, Lynn Michaels, Marriage by Design, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 214

   Stuffed in a corner behind my whomper shield is a pair of hemp underwear, my fashion concession for the Greenies.

   2010, Adrienne Maria Vrettos, chapter 15, in The Exile of Gigi Lane, Margaret K. McElderry Books, →ISBN, page 191