A Whopping Big Number

When did whopping become obligatory before large numbers?

I first noticed it in my students' essays ("Shakespeare wrote a whopping 38 plays" and the like). But since then I don't think I have ever failed to see whopping inserted where attention to a large number was intended to be drawn. Why, just this morning I read that "a whopping 23,000 applications" had been submitted to the Ontario Power Authority for a green retrofit program. And while surfing the web earlier I saw this fearsome headline: "Worst Milkshake Packs A Whopping 2010 Calories"!

Sometimes, the adjective is used in irony (I see someone entitled their blog post "A Whopping TWO New Jerseyans Sign Up for Obamacare Benefits"), but as often as not whopping is inserted with all apparent sincerity, even in serious journalism and scholarly writing. This despite the fact that the Oxford English Dictionary labels its use colloquial or vulgar.

It's like the expression piping hot. People just like to put that word piping in before hot, especially at the end of recipes, where the aspiring cook is enjoined to serve the dish p— h—. The phrase has the reassurance of ubiquity; it may be assumed to be safely idiomatic.

The word whop (first attested in the 16th century) means "to strike with heavy blows; beat soundly, flog, thrash, belabour (a person or animal; rarely, an inanimate object." The OED also deems whop in its various senses colloquial or vulgar.

Whopping, as a participial adjective meaning "abnormally large or great; 'whacking,' 'thumping,'" is first attested in 1625. In 1818, Walter Scott wrote with sartorial enthusiasm in Rob Roy, "What a wapping weaver he was, and wrought my first pair o' hose." Curiously, none of the citations listed in OED place whopping with a number.

I wonder if, in the minds of some (no, a great many) writers, whopping has come to corner the intensifying-adjective-before-big-number lexical market. Perhaps I could suggest a few competitors of a higher register: impressive (as in "Ad Spend on Social Networks Gains Impressive Half-Point in Share") perhaps; or colossal ("Bill Adds Colossal $2 Billion to Deficit"); or, if you're hyperbolically inclined, astronomical ("Fourth Quarter Profit Soars an Astronomical 244%").

Come to think of it, the possibilities are endless. "Profits Shrink by a Crushing 40%"; or "House Sells for Mouth-Gaping $14 Million"; or "Cat Weighs in at Shriek-Inducing 40 Pounds".

But now I've come to a realization. Sometimes, in writing, a vulgar colloquialism is exactly what's called for. Time for a whopping 2010-calorie milkshake.

Good News

I learned this week that the Boldprint Graphic Novel series has won the 2011 Learning Magazine Teacher's Choice for Children's Book Award. I am the author of four titles in the series — Castaway Island, Kingdom of the Snow Cat, Operation Fly South, and Turtle Rescue.
     The series is published jointly by Rubicon Publishing and Oxford University Press. It had previously won the 2010 Texty Award for Textbook Excellence from the Text and Academic Authors Association.
     It seemed like the kind of news that might merit a blog post!