whopper

plural whoppers

1. informalSomething remarkably large.

   There's a storm blowing up, Sylvester—a 'whopper', speaking in the vernacular of the peasantry.

   1939, Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, The Wizard of Oz

   2 more examples

   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.

   1889, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 17, in Three Men in a Boat […]

   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.

   1910, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “The Poet and the Peasant”, in Strictly Business: More Stories of the Four Million, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC

2. informalAn outrageous or blatant lie.

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

   1922 February 2, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC

   2 more examples

   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, […]

   1894, Mark Twain, chapter XII, in Tom Sawyer Abroad

   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.

   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