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smasher

American  
[smash-er] / ˈsmæʃ ər /

noun

  1. a person or thing that smashes.

  2. a person or thing that is excellent, impressive, extraordinary, or the like.

    That new off-Broadway show is a real smasher.


smasher British  
/ ˈsmæʃə /

noun

  1. informal a person or thing that is very attractive or outstanding

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of smasher

First recorded in 1785–95; smash + -er 1

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

The one-time industrial powerhouse shut the atom smasher by the late 1950s; it sold the surrounding 10 acres in 2013.

From The Wall Street Journal Oct. 7, 2025

After I slapped my beef patty onto the grill, Paquette handed me a steel burger smasher.

From Slate Aug. 11, 2025

And it needed the world’s biggest atom smasher CERN’s Large Hadron Collider to produce the extreme surge of energies simulating those 1 trillionth to 2 trillionths of a second after the Big Bang.

From Seattle Times Apr. 9, 2024

In such a universe, a black hole appearing inside an atom smasher becomes much more feasible, potentially revealing insights into the very nature of gravity.

From Scientific American Feb. 14, 2023

If that were so, the reign of the cyclotron as sciences most powerful and effective atom smasher might be a brief one.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik

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