belly whopper
- noun
:
salto de panza
- During the swimming competition, Jenny landed a belly whopper and grimaced in pain after hitting the water.
Examples
-
After practicing his dives, he accidentally performed a belly whopper, splashing everyone around the pool.
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He attempted a tricky jump off the diving board, but the result was a belly whopper that left him gasping.
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So it's a belly whopper when it finally happens.
Fiction book (1999)
Synonyms
1
4.1
A dive where the stomach hits the water flat and hurts
A dive where someone lands flat on their stomach and feels a painful hit
A dive in which the front of the body lands flat on the water with a loud splash
How Forceful
7
3.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'belly' (abdomen) and 'whopper' (a big or forceful thing) give a clear hint that this involves a large/forceful action of the stomach area, so learners can partially infer it's something dramatic involving the belly. However, the precise sense 'a dive where the abdomen hits the water' and the convention of naming that kind of dive 'belly whopper' are not fully predictable from the words alone, so a B1 learner would likely need exposure to get the exact meaning.
Etymology
Belly whopper comes from the picture of a belly slapping the water with a big, painful smack, and whopper shows that the hit is large. So, it means 'a dive where the stomach hits the water first and it hurts'.