whale of a car
- noun
- Informal
:
gran coche
- Everyone stared at the whale of a car parked in front of the house.
Examples
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He bought a whale of a car after landing his new job.
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What a whale of a car!
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She always dreamed of driving a whale of a car along the coast.
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That is a whale of a car!
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Everyone stared at the whale of a car parked in front of the house.
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He bought a whale of a car after landing his new job.
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She always dreamed of driving a whale of a car along the coast.
Synonyms
23
4.4
A British maker of very expensive cars often seen as a sign of wealth
A person or thing people call the most luxurious example of its kind
How Impressive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun 'whale' evokes largeness or extraordinariness, so a learner who knows 'whale' and 'car' can partly infer that 'a whale of a car' refers to a very large or remarkable car. However, 'whale of a' functions as a colloquial evaluative idiom (compare 'a whale of a time') whose exact evaluative sense (impressive, extravagant, very large) is not strictly compositional and may require exposure, so the phrase is not fully predictable.
Etymology
Whale of a car uses the image of a huge whale to show that a car is very big or showy. That's why it means 'an impressive or extravagant car'.