wampus
1 Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of wampus
Perhaps extracted from catawampus
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.
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"A wampus," by his definition, "is a mythical cat. very large like a dragon, and he doesn't do anything but eat fair maidens."
From Time Magazine Archive
As I had often heard my grandpa say, it was a “ringtail wampus cat.”
From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls
But speaking of fish, I am reminded of the fur-bearing whiffletit; only some authorities say the whiffletit is not a fish at all, but a subspecies of the wampus family.
From Sundry Accounts by Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
They put me in a work-day rig, as usually is done— A wampus and short overalls all sewed up into one.
From City Ballads by Carleton, Will
Already this evening you have called it a bus, a boat, a kite, a star-hound, a wagon, an aerial flivver, a sky-chariot, a space-eating wampus, and I don't know what else.
From The Skylark of Space by Smith, E. E. (Edward Elmer)
Funny-looking wampuses, but they've got real brains—their think-tanks are very evidently full of bubbles.
From Spacehounds of IPC by Smith, E. E. (Edward Elmer)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
