Word.ws English Dictionary

whomperjawed

/wɒm.pə(ɹ).d͡ʒɔːd//wɑm.pɚ.d͡ʒɔd/

whomperjawed adjective: askew, amiss; not fitting, moving or working properly.

Adjective

whomperjawed

  1. (Southern US, Texas, dialectal, especially) Askew, amiss; not fitting, moving or working properly.
    • The pending bill as it stands presents another whomper-jawed, lopsided, cross-eyed picture.1942 September 30, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library, Legislative History, Public Law 729 - 77th Congress, Chapter 578 - 2d Session, H.R. 7565, page 7893, column 3
    • Honestly, I felt pretty wolfish that time. I didn’t have a thing to defend myself with but my fist. But I was much of a man, and he was a little gangling, bandy-legged, whomper-jawed, worthless specimen of humanity.1942, Salomon Alexander Wright, My Rambles as East Texas Cowboy, Hunter, Fisherman, Tie-Cutter, Austin, Texas: Texas Folklore Society, page 92

Forms of whomperjawed

alternative formwhomper-jawed
alternative formwhopperjawed

Origin of whomperjawed

Ealiest known use is from 1942 (see quotations), and it was first mentioned in 1931. Possibly from an alteration of earlier whopperjawed, wopperjawed, wapper-jawed, ultimately related to wapper jaw (“a projecting underjaw”) (1825).

Questions about whomperjawed

What does whomperjawed mean?
Whomperjawed means askew, amiss; not fitting, moving or working properly.
What part of speech is whomperjawed?
Whomperjawed is an adjective.
How do you pronounce whomperjawed?
Whomperjawed is pronounced /wɒm.pə(ɹ).d͡ʒɔːd/ (UK).

Words near whomperjawed in the dictionary

  1. whomped
  2. whomped on
  3. whomped up
  4. whomper
  5. whomper-jawed
  6. whomperjawed
  7. whompers
  8. whomping
  9. whomping on
  10. whomping up
  11. whomps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whomperjawed (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: “whomperjawed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whomperjawed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.