whacking

Pluralwhackings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of whack.

   The farmer spent the morning whacking thistles down with a long stick.

   Whacking the dusty rug against the railing sent up a thick cloud.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of whack, not only striking. In slang it can mean killing someone, or sharing something out, where up often follows (whacking up the proceeds). In Singapore English, whacking a task means taking it on without knowing how or planning. As a gerund it sits close to the noun for a beating, which is countable: a whacking, two whackings.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A beating; an act of striking someone or something forcefully and repeatedly.

   The bully promised the smaller kids a whacking if they told the teacher.

   Their team took a real whacking in the second half of the match.

   Similarbeating, thrashing, hiding, drubbing, hammering

3. 3
   adjectivecolloquial

   Exceptionally large; huge, often paired with another intensifier such as great or big.

   She landed a whacking great salmon on her very first cast.

   The renovation left them with a whacking big bill to pay off.

   Similarwhopping, huge, enormous, thumping, massive

   Oppositetiny, small

   Note

   An intensifier with a long comic pedigree: Thomas Bridges's A Burlesque Translation of Homer (1762) already has "a whacking great dun cow." It can stand alone, as in F. Marion Crawford's Man Overboard! (1903), where a preacher has "a whacking appetite." The doubled whacking great is still the familiar pattern. It does not take degrees: nothing is more whacking than something else.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   Alternative form of waacking.

   He fell in love with whacking after watching dancers spin their arms at the club.

   Teachers at the festival offered an afternoon workshop on whacking.

   Note

   A spelling variant of waacking, the disco dance built on rhythmic footwork and arms moving to the beat. Unlike the noun for a beating, it is uncountable. People dance whacking or take a class in it, but no one gives anyone "a whacking" in this sense. Where a sentence could be read either way, the spelling waacking avoids the confusion.

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