Make Your Point > Archived Issues > WALLOPING

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pronounce WALLOPING: Say it "WALL uh ping." To hear it, click here. connect this word to others: If you're feeling slangy, you might pick the word walloping to describe something huge, vast, gigantic, colossal, mind-boggling, t__anic, or Br_________ian. Could you recall those last two synonyms? T__anic means "huge, like a giant from Greek myth (or a ship named for one)." And Br_________ian means "huge, like a giant from a certain country in the book Gulliver's Travels." (To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)     definition: We're not sure exactly where the slangy verb "wallop" came from. It has many meanings, including "to gallop (to run quickly)," "to move in a clumsy way," and "to beat harshly." So, if you refer to something as walloping, you mean it's moving quickly; or moving clumsily; or just being huge or impressive, as if able to beat anything else. grammatical bits: Part of speech: Adjective: "It's a walloping lie." Also a noun: "We heard the walloping." Also a verb, both the transitive kind ("The hurricane walloped Florida") and the intransitive kind ("She went walloping off"). Other forms:  Wallop, walloped, walloper(s). how to use it: We don't spend too much time with silly, slangy words like "wallop," but I like this one. It can deliver a touch of humor, surprise, and whimsy to an otherwise serious statement. You might talk about walloping music or other sounds: the kind that's loud, wild, fast, clumsy, or aggressive. Or, call something a walloping success or failure, a walloping victory or defeat, or walloping good fun. Or, you might talk about something moving at a walloping speed or covering a walloping distance. Or talk about a walloping number or amount of something. Used this way, "walloping" is an especially fun substitute or parallel for "whopping." "Per serving, the Fiber Gourmet pasta has a whopping 7 grams of protein and a walloping 25 grams of fiber. Hold onto your gut." To use "wallop" as a noun, you might say that something packs, gives, or delivers a wallop. "Are you sure that was a jalapeno and not a ghost pepper? It packed quite the wallop." And to use "wallop" as a verb, you might say that one thing wallops another. "The pandemic walloped small businesses." "This author spends two hundred pages walloping you with her point." examples: "Onstage, the group went for a simulation of punk: black T-shirts, walloping drums, blaring guitars and unkempt vocals."     — Jon Pareles, New York Times, 14 December 2014 "Various state bodies pay walloping salaries as they hire private-sector high-flying finance directors."     — Polly Toynbee, The Guardian, 18 May 2010 has this page helped you understand "walloping"? Awesome, I'm glad it helped! Thanks for letting me know! If you have any questions about this word, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. study it: Explain the meaning of "walloping" without saying "massive" or "mammoth." try it out: If you've read Roald Dahl's The Witches, you might remember the way it ends, in the scene described below in Salon: "The boy is destined to live the rest of his life as a mouse. This leads to a brief conversation with his grandmother that packs an emotional wallop, wherein he asks about a mouse's typical lifespan. His grandmother takes a moment to consider the question, then responds that since he is a 'mouse-person' hybrid, he could live about nine years. The boy is thrilled." With this scene in mind as an example, talk about another scene from a book or movie that packs an emotional wallop. If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.) before you review, play: Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out. Our game for September is "Four Quick Ways to Wreck a Sentence: From Professionally Polished to Strategically Sabotaged." In each issue this month, compare two versions of a description of a popular movie. See if you can determine which is the real one (the professionally polished version from IMDB.com) and which is the fake one (the strategically sabotaged version from yours truly). The fake one will demonstrate one of the four quick ways to wreck a sentence, listed below. So, for an extra challenge, see if you can identify which of these four has been employed in the act of sabotage. Here are the four quick ways to wreck a sentence: 1. Make the details fuzzier or fewer. 2. Jumble the order of information, forcing the reader to slow down or back up. 3. Ruin the rhythm by breaking a pattern in a pair or list. 4. Make the whole thing a chore to read by swapping in a subject that's long or abstract, and/or a verb that's vague or passive. Make it even worse by pushing the subject and the verb really far away from each other. (Naturally, if you invert each item above, you get Four Quick Ways to Strengthen a Sentence.) Here's an example: Version A: "The Shawshank Redemption: Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency." Version B: "The Shawshank Redemption: Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding eventual redemption and solace through acts of common decency." Which is real, and which is fake? And in the fake one, which of the four quick ways to wreck a sentence have I employed? Answer: A is real; B is fake. The fake was created with #2, "Jumble the order of information." Readers find it easier to process information when it's in a logical or chronological order, and when they can start with the shorter, simpler words and phrases before moving on to the longer, more complex ones. Here, it's better to write "solace and eventual redemption" instead of "eventual redemption and solace," for three reasons. One, the characters in the story probably achieve solace before they achieve redemption; two, solace as a concept is less intense and less abstract than redemption; and three, "solace" is many syllables shorter than "eventual redemption." Try this last one today: Version A: "Back to the Future: Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent thirty years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the eccentric scientist Doc Brown." Version B: "Back to the Future: A 17-year-old high school student named Marty McFly is accidentally sent thirty years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the eccentric scientist Doc Brown." Which is real, and which is fake? And in the fake one, which of the four quick ways to wreck a sentence have I employed? To see the answers, scroll all the way down. review this word: 1. Opposites of WALLOPING include A. SLOW, TINY, GENTLE, and GRACEFUL. B. SLOW, RICH, SIMPLE, and SATISFYING. C. SLOW, DULL, STAGNANT, and LAGGING. 2. When three-year-old Charlie walloped an animatronic Halloween spider, his father posted the video online, earning Charlie a few minutes of fame as _____. A. a brave warrior and future boxer B. a powerful singer, destined for the stage C. an open-hearted lover of all God's creatures Answers to review questions: 1. A 2. A Answers to the game questions: A is real; B is fake. The fake was created with #3, "Ruin the rhythm by breaking a pattern." The difference is subtle! Check out how the real version introduces the two characters with parallel phrasing: "person, appositive explaining who he is:" "Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student" and "his close friend, the eccentric scientist Doc Brown." a final word: I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.