whiff-whaff
/ˈwɪfˌwæf/
whiff-whaff noun: table tennis.
Noun (1)
whiff-whaff (uncountable)
- Table tennis.
- Boris Johnson's claim ping-pong was originally a Victorian English invention called whiff-whaff has been attacked by the descendants of the world's oldest sporting and games manufacturer.[2008 September 2, Chris Irvine, “Boris Johnson in whiff-whaff ping-pong row”, in The Telegraph, retrieved 24 Nov 2020
- Jesus wept, there I'd been envisaging a weekend spent reading a book with only my top half hanging out of my tent, and the next thing I know I'm signed up for a spot of naked whiff-whaff. Not that Tom seemed too bothered. "I'm not bad at table-tennis," he said as we made our way to our pitch.2010, Ben Dirs, Tom Fordyce, Karma Chameleons, →ISBN
Noun (2)
whiff-whaff (plural whiff-whaffs)
- The breathy sound of something rushing quickly; whoosh.
- Then, no one saw precisely how it happened, whiff-whaff, Lemoine's weapon flew from his hand and struck the wall with a whirr and a jangle.1922, Stanley John Weyman, The Wild Geese, page 87
Noun (3)
whiff-whaff (uncountable)
- Nonsense, words or deeds of little import.
- Whau, aw'll begin o' thisn' then. It's whiff-whaff Stuart, -- snifterin' Finch yo'known Virtue has laft o' -- truth is fro' o'flown!1854, Tim Bobbin, Samuel Bamford, The dialect of South Lancashire: or, Tim Bobbin's Tummus and Meary, page 4
- If you dinna lackey my lady you'll be in for a whiff-whaff o' her sharp temper.1887, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, A Border Shepherdess: A Romance of Eskdale, page 96
- Synonyms:
- absurdity, all my eye, all my eye and Betty Martin, apple grease, applesauce, bafflegab, balderdash, balls, baloney, banana oil
- Unnecessary items or additions.
- Never, never, wear any kind of a whiff-whaff or a thing-ama-bob on your hat.1938, Loraine Osborn, Your Voice Personality, page 137
- Haughton, a great believer in the value of straight football, asked Warner the night before the game if he had pulled such "whiff- whaff," as Percy termed it.1975, Jack Newcombe, The best of the athletic boys: the white man's impact on Jim Thorpe
Synonyms of whiff-whaff
- absurdity
- all my eye
- all my eye and Betty Martin
- bafflegab
- balderdash
- balls
- baloney
- Bandini
- baragouin
- batcrap
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of whiff-whaff
| plural | whiff-whaffs |
|---|
Origin of whiff-whaff
From Whiff-Waff, coined by Slazenger & Sons in 1900.
Onomatopoeia
South Lancashire dialect for nonsense, unspecified words or deeds.
Questions about whiff-whaff
- What does whiff-whaff mean?
- Whiff-whaff means table tennis.
- What part of speech is whiff-whaff?
- Whiff-whaff is a noun.
- How do you pronounce whiff-whaff?
- Whiff-whaff is pronounced /ˈwɪfˌwæf/.
- What is the plural of whiff-whaff?
- The plural of whiff-whaff is whiff-whaffs.
Words near whiff-whaff in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: whiff-whaff (page history and authors). 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-whiff-whaff.wav.
Cite this entry: “whiff-whaff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whiff-whaff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.