whippersnapper love

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person regarded as insignificant and pretentious.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A shallow, insignificant person; a whipster: also used attributively.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun colloq. A diminutive, insignificant, or presumptuous person.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a young and cheeky or presumptuous person

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who is unimportant but cheeky and presumptuous

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Alteration (influenced by whip) of dialectal snippersnapper.]

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Examples

  • Is some 84 year old entrenched congressman going to substancially change his lifestyle and voting record because of some young whippersnapper is elected president?

    Waxman-Dingell Showdown - Swampland - TIME.com 2008

  • A whippersnapper was a whip that was all coiled up and if you flipped your wrist it would

    Discussion Forum - TuDiabetes - A Community for People Touched by Diabetes 2009

  • When I spell-checked this post, it didn't recognize "whippersnapper" and, and as an alternative recommended "hyperkinetic."

    Willie, My Momma, and Me Slimbolala 2006

  • As much as I've received the "whippersnapper" treatment from older music fans, they're probably right in the belief that today's rock bands can't hold a candle to

    Latest stories 2010

  • As much as I've received the "whippersnapper" treatment from older music fans, they're probably right in the belief that today's rock bands can't hold a candle to

    Latest stories 2010

  • Drought called to temporary end in O.C. UCI to study brain of 107 year-old 'whippersnapper'

    The Orange County Register - Homepage 2009

  • Dawg is closing in on 68 years old and lives in Mexico as he has for the past nine years but there was a time when I might have preferred to live in Manhattan over Mexico but that time is 15 years behind me as as I get older small towns are more to my liking than they were when I was a whippersnapper and huge cities irritate me more than please me.

    Page 2 2009

  • And seem to have no idea how very irksome that idea will get once we no longer feel any sympathy for the young whippersnapper.

    More Doctor Who Speculation... rabid1st 2009

  • A young whippersnapper had been able to take liberties with it.

    Chapter XXII 2010

  • Pre-Beijing I was ranked second in the world in the 200 metres IM individual medley," Whorwood says, "but two Chinese came along and knocked me down to fourth, and now this young whippersnapper from Ukraine's come along so there's a battle just for fourth or fifth.

    Matt Whorwood is lining up all his likely London 2012 rivals 2011

Comments

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  • contains 4 p's

    December 2, 2006

  • words with four p's, or four of any letter, are somehow more magically crunchy than other words. extra marshmallowy delightful.

    December 25, 2006

  • Have you ever heard this word used when it was not preceded by "young?"

    June 20, 2008

  • Oh shut up, y'ol' whippersnapper!

    June 20, 2008

  • Well, I guess if the shoe fits...

    June 20, 2008

  • Never before. I shudder to think of meeting an old whippersnapper.

    June 20, 2008

  • What if you fed a plate of peas to a young whippersnapper? How many p's would it contain then?

    June 20, 2008

  • I think old whippersnappers would probably suffer whiplash if they snapped their whips. Or whipped their snaps.

    June 20, 2008

  • Not to snipe or be snippy, but snappywhippers whip snaps; whippersnappers snap whips. But which whips do whippersnappers snap?

    June 21, 2008

  • The snappy ones, of course.

    June 24, 2008

  • “ ‘Thou wretch!—thou vixen!—thou shrew!’ said I to my wife on the morning after our wedding; ‘thou witch!—thou hag!—thou whippersnapper—thou sink of iniquity!—thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable!—thou—thou—’ here standing upon tiptoe, seizing her by the throat, and placing my mouth close to her ear, I was preparing to launch forth a new and more decided epithet of opprobrium, which should not fail, if ejaculated, to convince her of her insignificance, when to my extreme horror and astonishment I discovered that I had lost my breath.”

    Loss of Breath by Edgar Allan Poe

    October 10, 2009

  • It is possible to describe anyone as both "old" and "cheeky"?

    October 11, 2009