Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An imaginary animal whose nature and features are purposely left undefined. Compare gyascutus and snark.
  • noun In poker, a round of jack-pots, usually played after a certain hand is shown, such as four of a kind.

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

  • noun Slang An imaginary creature, of undefined character.

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

  • noun A whimsical monster in folklore and children's fiction; a bugbear.
  • noun obsolete Term of disparagement
  • noun poker A ruling in which the opening stake limits are doubled for the next play after the appearance of a very good hand.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Of American origin circa 1856. Popularized by appearing in a sermon parody attributed to William P. Brannan as "Where the lion roareth and the whangdoodle mourneth for her first-born," published in The Harp of a Thousand Strings: Or, Laughter for a Lifetime (1858).

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Examples

  • And unmerciful was he in his scathing denunciation of the "whangdoodle" preacher who, by the cadence of a tuneful voice, strove to produce such demonstrations.

    Brief Sketch of the Life and Labors of Rev. Alexander Bettis. Also an Account of the Founding and Development of the Bettis Academy 1913

  • A chaplain of one of the disorganized regiments was haranguing the mob in what may be termed the whangdoodle style: "Rally, men; rally, and we may yet be saved.

    The Citizen-Soldier or, Memoirs of a Volunteer John Beatty

  • They have planted him deep in a grave by the fence, where the sand burs are thick and the jimson is dense; he's sleeping at last, and as still as a mouse, held down by a boulder as big as a house, and the whangdoodle mourns in a neighboring tree, with a voice that's as sad as the sorrowing sea.

    Rippling Rhymes Walt Mason

  • He was written of as the man whom Douglas had beaten two years before, and without other distinction; as lacking in culture, in every way inferior to Seward; as a whangdoodle stump speaker of the second class, and without any known principle.

    Children of the Market Place Edgar Lee Masters 1909

  • Mr. Okada has been solemnly assured that, in dealing with certain white men, they will insist upon an eye for an optic and a tusk for a tooth; he knows that if he starts anything further he will go straight to that undiscovered country where the woodbine twineth and the whangdoodle mourneth for its mate. "

    The Pride of Palomar 1918

  • She's got on La Gonizetti's dress, and her voice has the show - girl's clangy-tin-panny-whangdoodle, but that's all _I_ recognize. "

    Fran 1913

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