whopper

Noun

whopper (plural whoppers)

1. (informal) Something remarkably large.
   • I’d gone out pike fishing, bless you, never thinking of a trout, and when I saw that whopper on the end of my line, blest if it didn’t quite take me aback. Well, you see, he weighed twenty-six pound.1889, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 17, in Three Men in a Boat […]
   • I’ve just run down from Ulster County to look at the town, bein’ that the hayin’s over with. Gosh! but it’s a whopper. I thought Poughkeepsie was some punkins; but this here town is five times as big.1910, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “The Poet and the Peasant”, in Strictly Business: More Stories of the Four Million, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC
2. (informal) An outrageous or blatant lie.
   • When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the subject and let him down easy, […]1894, Mark Twain, chapter XII, in Tom Sawyer Abroad
   • Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all. Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory.1922 February 2, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC