Dictionary

whopperjawed en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ˈʍ-/ (General-American)
• /ˈʍ-/ (cot-caught-merger)
• /ˈwɑpɚd͡ʒɔd/ (General-American)
• (US) audio
• /ˈwɑpɚd͡ʒɑd/ (cot-caught-merger)

Etymology

Earliest known use is from 1854 (see quotations).

Meanings

1. (qualifier:North Carolina) Crooked, misaligned, out of sorts.
   • The fact that inexperienced, ignorant men have often been induced by the advice of mere theorists, or their own over-confidence, to undertake this kind of building, resulting, as might naturally be expected, in ungainly, crooked, whopper-jawed, and cracked walls, is no evidence whatever against the system, but only an evidence of the folly of men, in undertaking what they don’t understand. 1856 July 14, “Gravel, Grout, or Concrete Buildings”, in American Phrenological Journal, volume XXIV, number 1, New York, page 10, column 1:
   • The newspaper politician-editors are whistling to keep up courage. They have found some green persimmons somewhere, for their whistling is badly whopperjawed. 1894 July 10, “Editorial Notes”, in The Progressive Farmer, volume 9, number 22, Raleigh, North Carolina, page 2, column 1:
   • Cattwumpus, arfybarsed, whopperjawed, it‘s an impossible construct, the cosmos given us to observe in the fun-house mirror of our perception, and we‘re just kids at the carnival, our faces smeared with spun sugar and wild excitement, alive and happy till we hit exhaustion and break down into tears. 2021 September 8, George Bradley, A Stroll in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, LSU Press, →ISBN:
   • “Conflicting circumstances have me so seriously muddled I am whopperjawed if I can say, but it looks like it. A boy seldom turns loose of a pocketknife by accident.” 1915, Clarence E. Hatfield, The Tug of the Millstone, Richard G. Badger, pages 238–239:
   • […] whopper jawed fogies, […] 1854 January 3, “Farm Work for December”, in Industrial Luminary, volume 1, number 24, Parkville, Missouri, page 1, column 5:
   • “I much prefer straight sailin‘ tew this goin‘ in cattery-wampus towards one shore an‘ then skewin‘ off towards the others,” said he, suiting the action to the words. “It‘s enough tew make a feller whopperjawed.” 1907, Richard Taylor Wiley, “XVIII. On Bridenhall Shoal”, in Sim Greene and Tom the Tinker‘s Men: A Narrative of the Whisky Insurrection; Being a Setting Forth of the Memoirs of the Late David Froman, Esquire, J. C. Winston, page 157:

Forms