Wacky

How to spell wacky

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wacky

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wacky mean?

1. adjectiveAmusingly odd, eccentric, or unconventional in a playful way.

Wacky in a sentence

• The advert used a wacky talking robot to sell breakfast cereal.

• Her wacky sense of humour kept the whole office laughing.

Where does wacky come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wacky began as British dialect slang in the nineteenth century, built from the word 'whack', meaning a heavy blow or hit. The underlying idea was that someone might behave oddly as if they had been struck on the head, much like the older expressions 'crackpot' or being 'off one's head'. An early dialect form 'whacky' even meant a fool or simpleton. The sense softened over time from genuinely crazy to merely eccentric, zany, or amusingly unconventional, and the spelling settled on the simpler 'wacky' without the 'h'. American film and advertising culture of the twentieth century cemented its playful modern flavour, so the word now suggests harmless silliness rather than madness.

How the word is built

• wack (from whack: a hard blow)
• -y (adjective suffix)