Whopping

How to spell whopping

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce whopping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does whopping mean?

1. adjectiveExtremely large, impressive, or surprising in size or amount.
2. adverbUsed before an adjective to emphasise great size, especially in the phrase 'whopping great'.

Whopping in a sentence

• adjective

  The repair left her with a whopping bill at the end of the month.

• adverb

  The builders left a whopping great hole in the front garden.

• adjective

  The company posted a whopping profit for the third quarter.

• adverb

  She handed me a whopping large slice of cake.

Where does whopping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows out of the old verb 'whop' (also spelled 'whap'), which meant to strike or beat with a heavy, resounding blow and was imitative in origin, that is, it was coined to echo the very sound of a hard thump. The verb is recorded in English from around the sixteenth century, and from it came the noun 'whopper', meaning anything strikingly big, including a bare-faced lie. The present participle 'whopping' came to be used as a colourful intensifier, the idea being that something is so large it lands like a hefty blow. By the eighteenth century 'whopping' was firmly established in casual speech to mean huge or remarkable in size. The single 'h' after the 'w' is the spelling trap, since the word looks as if it might begin like 'hop' rather than 'whop'; remembering its kinship with 'whopper' helps fix the 'wh-'.

How the word is built

• whop (to strike a heavy blow, imitative)
• -ing (present participle used as intensifier)