whacking
part of speech
adjective (whacking — informal UK, Australia); adverb (whacking — informal); noun (a whacking); verb, -ing form of whack (whack, whacks, whacked, whacking)
meaning for a pupil
1) Hitting someone or something hard with a loud smack. tree →
2) (noun, old-fashioned) A beating as a punishment. tree →
3) (informal, UK and Australia) Very big: "a whacking great spider" or "a whacking bill". tree →
sense in the lessons
In stories it describes hitting: whacking a ball with a bat, whacking a pillow. "A whacking great..." in British and Australian chat means "a really huge...". In old stories, children were given "a whacking" as punishment; today hitting children is wrong and against the law in many countries, including Scotland, Wales and New Zealand. Phrases: "a whacking great", "a whacking fine".
examples
- She was whacking the ball over the fence. tree →
- There's a whacking great spider in the bath! tree →
- Dad got a whacking bill from the garage. tree →
- He kept whacking the old rug to get the dust out. tree →
- In the old story, the boy got a whacking for stealing apples. tree →
- That's a whacking big slice of cake. tree →
- The wind was whacking the shutters against the wall. tree →
note
"Whack" is a regular verb (whacked, whacking). "Whacking" as an adjective is informal and almost always comes before "great" or "big". Do not confuse with "wacky" (crazy and funny). Hitting people is never okay.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «whacking» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.