whopperjawed

English

Alternative forms

• whipperjawed, whopper-jawed
• whomperjawed

Etymology

Earliest known use is from 1854 (see quotations).

Pronunciation

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Adjective

whopperjawed (comparative more whopperjawed, superlative most whopperjawed)

1. (North Carolina) Crooked, misaligned, out of sorts. [from mid-19th c.]
   • 1854 January 3, “Farm Work for December”, in Industrial Luminary, volume 1, number 24, Parkville, Missouri, page 1, column 5:

     […] whopper jawed fogies, […]

   • 1856 July, “Gravel, Grout, or Concrete Buildings”, in American Phrenological Journal, volume XXIV, number 1, New York, page 10, column 1:

     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.

   • 1894 July 10, “Editorial Notes”, in The Progressive Farmer, volume 9, number 22, Raleigh, North Carolina, page 2, 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.

   • 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:

     “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.”

   • 1915, Clarence E. Hatfield, The Tug of the Millstone, Richard G. Badger, pages 238–239:

     “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.”

   • 2021 September 8, George Bradley, A Stroll in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, LSU Press, →ISBN:

     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.

References

• Wolfram, Walt, Reaser, Jeffrey (2014) Talkin' Tar Heel: How Our Voices Tell the Story of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press, →ISBN, page 117

Further reading

• “Whopperjawed”, in The Word Detective‎^[1], 2010 December 18, retrieved 2024-06-21