make whoopee

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

make whoopee (third-person singular simple present makes whoopee, present participle making whoopee, simple past and past participle made whoopee)

1. (slang) To enjoy oneself in a boisterous manner.
2. (slang) To engage in sexual intercourse.
   • 1971, “Mama's Pearl”, in Motown (unreleased version with alternate lyrics), performed by The Jackson 5:

     Guess who's making whoopee with your girlfriend. Those dreading words just drove me out of my mind. Guess who's making whoopee with your girlfriend. He's said what's mine is yours and yours is all mine.

   • 1990, Leonard Maltin, Leonard Maltin's TV Movies and Video Guide, Penguin, →ISBN, page 55:

     Disaster at the newly opened ski resort where hard-driving tycoon Hudson is determined to double his not insubstantial investment while his ex-wife Mia is making whoopee with one of the locals championing ecology.

   • 1995, Bradford Matsen, Planet Ocean: A Story of Life, the Sea and Dancing to the Fossil Record, Ten Speed Press, →ISBN, page 1:

     Some of the rich orange globes of life-yet-to-be always wash from the streambed gravel where they were deposited a few months earlier by salmon that had died, poignantly, mere hours after making whoopee.

   • 2004, Andrew Bender, Amsterdam: City Guide, Lonely Planet, →ISBN, page 12:

     Sex and drugs are discussed openly (one newspaper recently examined puberty by showing photographs of the development of both male and female genitalia), and you might overhear a pub chat where Jan tells all details of making whoopee.

   • 2006, Lorelei Sharkey, Emma Taylor, Em & Lo's Rec Sex: An A–Z Guide to Hooking Up, Chronicle Books, →ISBN, page 89:

     Before you get all prickly on us, "just friends" doesn't necessarily mean you're making whoopee together–it simply implies that the friendship is a little, shall we say, complicated. Either a) you used to make whoopee, b) one of you would kinda maybe like to make whoopee, c) you both kind of know you'll eventually make whoopee, or d) you spend so much time together that you may as well be making whoopee–what the hell's stopping you, anyway?

   • 2010, Charlaine Harris, Dead and Gone, Penguin, →ISBN, page 162:

     "Did you think that since we made whoopee and you said I was yours, I'd want to quit work and keep house for you?"

Synonyms

• (to enjoy oneself): whoopee
• (to engage in sexual intercourse): make it, make out, have sex; see also Thesaurus:copulate

Further reading

• “make whoopee”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “make whoopee”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.