the.com/ripper
Someone so impressively good or bad they tear through the scale entirely.
means A person or thing so extreme in quality — brilliant or brutal — that ordinary words can't contain them.
from From 'rip,' meaning to tear something apart forcefully, traced back to Germanic roots shared with words for scratching or pulling. The leap to 'impressively excellent' is British and Australian slang — something so good it 'rips' through expectations. The darker sense, of course, got cemented by one unnamed 19th-century London murderer whose press nickname made 'Ripper' synonymous with horror.
- origin
- Victorian slang, predates Jack the Ripper's fame
- aussie usage
- highest praise, means fantastic not violent
- duality
- can describe a party or a murderer
- etymology
- from rip, meaning to tear apart