Whack

How to spell whack

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce whack

What does whack mean?

1. verbTo strike something or someone sharply with a hard, flat blow.
2. nounA sharp, resounding blow, or informally an attempt at something.

Whack in a sentence

• verb

  He leaned over to whack the stuck drawer until it slid open.

• noun

  The branch came down with a loud whack on the shed roof.

• verb

  She watched the batter whack the ball clean over the fence.

• noun

  She decided to have a whack at fixing the leak herself.

Where does whack come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Whack first appears in English in the early 1700s as an imitative or echoic word, that is, one coined to mimic the actual sound of a hard, flat strike landing on something. It probably grew out of, or runs parallel to, the older word 'thwack', which served the same purpose and dates back to the 1500s. Because the word was built from sound rather than from a borrowed root, it has no foreign ancestor to trace; the spelling simply tries to capture the abrupt, slapping noise. The silent 'wh' opening, also seen in 'whip' and 'whisk', reflects an older English spelling pattern for sharp, breathy sounds, and that initial 'wh' is exactly the trap, since the word is pronounced as if it began with a plain 'w'. From the literal blow, English later spun off casual senses such as 'have a whack at it' (an attempt) and the phrase 'out of whack' (not working properly).

How the word is built

• whack (single root, imitative of the sound of a sharp blow)