whacker
Pluralwhackers
- 1A person or thing that strikes or hits something with force.
He earned a reputation as the neighborhood's tireless whacker of overgrown weeds.
The machine's rubber whacker pounded each panel into shape.
Similarhitter, striker, beater
Note
The plain agent noun, built from whack and -er: whoever or whatever does the whacking. George Blaikie's Scandals of Australia's Strange Past (1963) uses it of an Australian heavyweight who "didn't have any science" but was "a mighty whacker". Applied to a person, then, it praises raw force rather than technique, and it sits comfortably after an adjective of strength.
- 2An exceptionally large example of its kind.
The contractor pulled a whacker of a boulder out of the foundation.
Their new television is an absolute whacker, taking up half the wall.
Similarwhopper
- 3A bold, obvious falsehood that few people would actually believe.
She caught him in a whacker about where he'd spent the whole weekend.
The politician's claim was such a whacker that even his allies laughed.
Similarwhopper
Note
Here the word does the same double duty as whopper, which also stretches from anything large to a lie too big to swallow. In Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days (1857) a schoolboy cries "Oh, there's a whacker!" to fling back an accusation. In Morley Roberts's The Blue Peter (1908) a captain is "telling whackers" worthy of Baron Munchausen. Tell is the verb it naturally takes.
- 4An amateur radio operator with an intense interest in emergency response, who may travel to the scene of an incident.
Like a storm chaser, but carrying a radio instead of a camera.
The club's resident whacker had his radio packed before the sirens even stopped.
A couple of whackers turned up at the wildfire perimeter to relay messages.
Note
Amateur-radio slang, and only mildly derogatory. The label suggests that an operator's appetite for emergencies has tipped from useful into excessive, whether that means monitoring incidents or driving out to the scene with equipment. Because it passes judgment on that enthusiasm, it works best for describing a type among radio operators. Aimed directly at a person, it lands as a jab.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from "whack" combined with the suffix "-er".