Word.ws English Dictionary

whiff whaff

whiff whaff is the alternative form of whiff-whaff.

Meaning of whiff-whaff

Noun (1)

whiff-whaff (uncountable)

  1. (archaic) 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

Noun (2)

whiff-whaff (plural whiff-whaffs)

  1. 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)

  1. (obsolete, Lancashire) 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
  2. (Lancashire) 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
    Synonyms:
    Sorted by number of Google hits, widget, hickey, gizmo, thingy, gimmick, thingie, jigger, gismo, gubbins

Forms of whiff whaff

pluralwhiff whaffs

Questions about whiff whaff

What is whiff whaff the alternative form of?
Whiff whaff is the alternative form of whiff-whaff.

Words near whiff whaff in the dictionary

  1. whied
  2. whies
  3. whies and wherefores
  4. whiff
  5. whiff waff
  6. whiff whaff
  7. whiff whaffs
  8. whiff-waff
  9. whiff-whaff
  10. whiff-whaffs
  11. whiffed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whiff whaff (page history and authors); 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.

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