whiz
/wɪz/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.90 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To make a whirring or hissing sound, similar to that of an object speeding through the air.
American usage
noun
Someone who is remarkably skilled at something.
American usage; Countable; Informal; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "I whizzed the ball past the catcher."
- "We whizzed in the bushes."
- "The first thing Howard did following Vi's departure was to haul the step-stool over to the kitchen sink and whiz into the drain again."
- "Immediately there was a ringing and a singing in the hills, and then a whispering and a lisping and a whiz and a buzz all about him, for the little people were now some whirling round and round in the dance, and others sporting and tumbling about in the moonshine, and playing a thousand merry pranks and tricks."
- "He's a whiz with the computers."
- "The chefs are veritable whizzes at arranging food on your plate to look like happy frog faces and growly clown faces."
Etymology
Onomatopoeic. Compare huzz, hizz, hiss. In some noun senses perhaps derived from wizard. In the sense “remarkably skilled person”, it may also simply a misspelling of its shortened form wiz, or it may be a shortening of whiz kid, which may have a different origin, perhaps whiz(z) in the sense of “something very remarkable”, attested from 1908, or the interjection (as in whizz-bang or gee whiz). In fact, whiz(z) in the sense of “something very remarkable” may be derived from whizz-bang in the sense of “conspicuously talented”, and in military slang whizz-bang (or whizbang) can mean “an exceptionally skilful person” (attested in 1916 and later), which whiz in the same sense seems to be a shortening of (whence presumably also whiz kid).