big one

noun

1

informal : a thousand dollars

The house in the background, we bought it for 70 grand in 1967, it would go for two hundred big ones now, easy …

—John Updike

2

informal : an extravagant lie : whopper

Talking about lying, I thought, I had just told a big one.

—Elizabeth Chandler

3

the big one or less commonly the Big One : an extremely large and destructive earthquake

… the prediction that the Big One may come in December is triggering tremors up and down the Mississippi Valley.

—Michael J. McCarthy

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1863, in the meaning defined at sense 2