Word: whopping
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Referring to Mr. Bob de Lany's criticism of your use of the word "whop" [TIME, Sept. 13], and your query as to whether readers agree with this gentleman...
Therefore, I am inclined to go along with TIME'S description of the airplane accident as "whop!," admitting at the same time that my opinion can be disqualified as I am more familiar with "whams" than "whops...
...TIME'S ear, a trimotored airplane, colliding with a pole, breaking apart in mid-air and striking the ground, makes noise. As near as TIME and the English alphabet could catch the sound, it was whop, crack and smash. Do other readers agree with Writer de Lany...
...Death at Daytona" in your Aug. 23 issue, for example: "Suddenly, just after the big transport had drummed some 25 ft. above the highway at the south end of the field, there were three rending crashes, whop! when the ship slammed full-tilt into a foot-thick pine power pole, crack! when the motors ripped out and thudded to earth, and smash! when the rest of the stricken plane bashed into a palmetto thicket...
That writeup struck me as juvenile, dis-Jionest, trite and unconvincing: because a tragedy cannot adequately be described by such comic-strip adverbs as whop! crack! and smash! TIME'S customary understatement was missing. We are not only asked to visualize three distinct divisions of what must have been a confusing accident, but we are expected to do so through the medium of a whop! etc. when the writer has already said there were "three rending crashes." Does he mean that a whop! is a particular type of crash...