(plural whammies) (informal) an unpleasant situation or event that causes problems for sb/sth:
With this government we've had a double whammy of tax increases and benefit cuts.
ORIGIN From the 1950s American cartoon Li'l Abner, in which one of the characters could shoot a whammy (put a curse on sb) by pointing a finger with one eye open, or a double whammy with both eyes open.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for whammy is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is whammy a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, whammy is tagged as noun.
Does whammy appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — whammy appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.