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whammy.

a serious or devastating setback

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈ(h)wæmi/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. a serious or devastating setback

  2. an evil spell; a curse or hex

  3. The vibrato system of an electric guitar, or just its lever (whammy bar)

    colloquial
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree English wham Proto-Germanic *-j-, *-ij- Proto-West Germanic *-i, *-ī Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English whammy From wham + -y.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.