4 4 MAGIC WORDS • Wam bam alakazam -- Penn Jillette and Teller, Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic (1997) • Wham-zam, alakazam -- Matthew Kinne, FirstFiction.net (2004) • Zam Zam Alakazam In Literature: • Nancy Moser, Time Lottery (2002) Whammy He hit her with some kind of mind-magic hypnosis whammy, and zoned her out entirely. -- Jim Butcher, Blood Rites (2004) Meanings: • Catch, deception, string attached "And here's the real whammy . . ." -- Elizabeth Warren, All Your Worth (2005) • Enchanting "Yeah, she's really spiritual. You know how she looks at you with those whammy eyes. There is definitely something greater than we are, oh golly, there's a much greater power out there." -- Stephen Goodwin, Breaking Her Fall (200 ) • Evil eye, jinx "What happened? Senna put the whammy on David? Cast a voodoo spell?" -- K.A. Applegate, Land of Loss (1999) "[W]hen they were left unhypnotized for a few days, they were afflicted with more than the usual number of hexes and whammies and practiced all sorts of magic to undo them." -- Bernard Malamud, The Natural (1952) "[O]ne could very well imagine that the whammies and the jinxes, too, seeped in from the dark gap between the buildings." -- Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book (1994) • Flare, spark, drama "[T]he fireworks, the whammy, the zing is what makes people chatter about what rattled their saddles last night." -- Marc Kelly Smith, Complete Idiot's Guide to Slam Poetry (2004) • Impact This sense of the word is often intensified: "double-whammy," "triple whammy." • Magic spell "[W]ith the right magic whammy, he wouldn't need any aliases." -- John Passarella, Monolith (2004)