Word.ws English Dictionary

whack

/ˈwæk/

whack noun: the sound of a heavy strike. Also the alternative spelling of wack.

Noun

whack (countable and uncountable, plural whacks)

  1. The sound of a heavy strike.
    Synonyms:
    thwack
  2. The strike itself.
    • Saka was a threat from the first whistle; Ukraine rightly wary of him and dishing out the usual whacks.March 26 2023, David Hytner, “Kane and Bukayo Saka combine against Ukraine for England’s perfect Euros start”, in The Guardian
    Synonyms:
    thwack
  3. The stroke itself, regardless of its successful impact.
  4. (slang) An attempt, a chance, a turn, a go, originally an attempt to beat someone or something.
    • C'mon. Take a whack at it.
    • 40 bucks a whack.
  5. (dated) A share, a portion, especially a full share or large portion.
    • I don’t care about much wine afterwards—I take my whack at dinner—I mean my share, you know; and when I have had as much as I want I toddle up to tea.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 39, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
    • “It’s damned tame, whatever it is, comin’ in here at feedin’ time an’ gettin’ its whack of fish.”1906 May–October, Jack London, chapter 2, in White Fang, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October 1906, →OCLC, part 1 (The Wild), page 16
  6. (obsolete) A whack-up: a division of an amount into separate whacks, a divvying up.
  7. (US, obsolete) A deal, an agreement.
    • "I'll stay if you will."
      "Good—that's a whack."1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter VI, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 70
    • It's a whack!
  8. (slang) A harmful outcome or repercussion.
    • But I rely on you to give me the nod in time to get Cora clear off whatever happens. I can take my own whack as it comes—as I always have done.1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London
  9. (dated, uncountable, disco-era drug slang) PCP, phencyclidine (also wack).
  10. (slang) The backslash, ⟨ \ ⟩.
    • del c:\docs\readme.txt
      Delete c colon whack docs whack readme dot text.

Verb

whack (third-person singular simple present whacks, present participle whacking, simple past and past participle whacked)

  1. (transitive) To hit, slap or strike.
    • The bat whacked the baseball.
    • Therefore he whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people watched him, thunderstruck, till some man, - I was told the chief's son, - in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a tentative jab with a spear at the white man - and of course it went quite easy between the...1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 198
  2. (slang, transitive) To assassinate, bump off.
    • Niko Bellic: So you want me to talk to him? / Jimmy Pegorino: I want you to whack him! And after that I want you to kill all the other rats I surround myself with...2008 April 29, Rockstar, Grand Theft Auto 4, Take-Two Interactive, level/area: Flatline
    • Ken Barrett, a loyalist gunman who eventually confessed to killing Mr. Finucane on orders from the paramilitary Ulster Defense Association, told a BBC investigative reporter, John Ware, that when he’d expressed reluctance about “whacking” a solicitor[…]2023 August 30, Megan K. Stack, Rob Stothard, “He Was Shot 14 Times at the Dinner Table. His Children Want to Know if Britain Ordered the Hit.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    Synonyms:
    clip
  3. (slang, transitive) To share or parcel out (often with up).
    • to whack the spoils of a robbery
    • When the sewer-hunters consider they have searched long enough […] the gang […] count out the money they have picked up, and proceed to dispose of the old metal, bones, rope, &c.; this done, they then, as they term it, “whack” the whole lot; that is, they divide it equally among all hands.1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, volume 2, London: G. Newbold, page 152
  4. To beat convincingly; to thrash.
    • The fidgety Majors were whacked 9-1 by the Kitchener Panthers at Couch and now trail their rivals 2-0 in an increasingly uncomfortable best-of-seven Intercounty Baseball League first-round series.2012, Ryan Pyette, Majors, Panthers play mind games, The London Free Press
  5. (UK) To surpass; to better.
    • Recently I was over in Ireland, I love the place, proper fishing, can't whack it!2012, Steve Cullen, Total Flyfisher
  6. (Singapore, Singlish) To attempt something despite not knowing how to do it; to take on a task spontaneously and carelessly without planning.
    • Miss Loi always tells her students not to anyhow whack, stay calm and know thy approach before attempting each question.2007 September 17, “Composite Functions – Anyhow Whack Time!”, in exampaper.com.sg
  7. (Singapore, Singlish) To eat something hurriedly.

Also used as

whack is also the alternative spelling of wack.

whack meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Nepali

whack in Hindi

व्हैक, व्हाक

whack in Marathi

व्हाक

whack in Gujarati

વ્હાક

whack in Nepali

व्हाक
More languagesFewer languages
whack in Arabic
قَتَلَ qatala

Examples of whack in a sentence

  • The number arrested is not over 600 — at $805 a whack, New Jersey has made half-a-million dollars arresting gay men.1989 April 15, Jon Autiello et al., “Police Cruisers Smash Queers”, in Gay Community News, page 5:
  • He pays his whack towards the upkeep of the State School up in town—”1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VII, in Capricornia, New York: Appleton, page 108:
  • We can do our whack, and when we do find them it will make things easier for all of us."1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 194:
  • For one thing I had a splendid supper when I got on board—a whack of cold, lean beef and pighells, bread, butter ad lib., tea, and plenty of good bread.1951, Katherine Mansfield, Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913-1922:

All 40 example sentences with whack

Synonyms of whack

Forms of whack

Noun
pluralwhacks
Verb
third-person singular presentwhacks
present participlewhacking
past participlewhacked
pastwhacked
Adjective
comparativewhacker
superlativewhackest

Past tense of whack: whacked

Plural of whack: whacks

Origin of whack

Uncertain. Originally Scottish; probably onomatopoeic, but compare Middle English thakken, from Old English þaccian (whence Modern thwack by conflation with whack). Sense 6 of the verb is likely a semantic loan from Malay hentam (“to strike; to do something carelessly”).

Words formed from whack

Phrases with whack

1 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with whack

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about whack

What does whack mean?
Whack means the sound of a heavy strike.
What is whack in Hindi?
Whack in Hindi is व्हैक, व्हाक. See Whack meaning in Hindi.
How do you use whack in a sentence?
The number arrested is not over 600 — at $805 a whack, New Jersey has made half-a-million dollars arresting gay men.
What part of speech is whack?
Whack can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce whack?
Whack is pronounced /ˈwæk/.
What is the plural of whack?
The plural of whack is whacks.

Words near whack in the dictionary

  1. whac-a-moles
  2. whachacallit
  3. whachacallits
  4. whachamacallit
  5. whachamacallits
  6. whack
  7. whack job
  8. whack jobs
  9. whack off
  10. whack on
  11. whack one out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whack (page history and authors); whack (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); whack (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); whack (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); whack (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-whack.ogg.

Cite this entry: “whack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.