1932 Wireless World 16 Mar. 277/2 Wobble or ‘wow’—to use the expressive American term..is not so troublesome nowadays, most modern sound cameras having anti-wow mechanism.

1942 Electronic Engin. 14 640/1 The principal snag of sub-standard projectors, that of speed variations, is well cared for in so far as relates to low-frequency variations, which are known as ‘wow’ and not, as stated, warble.

1960 K. Amis Take Girl like You xxiii. 271 Every couple of weeks Graham found out some new way of reducing distortion or filtering off surface noise or eliminating wow.

1968 New Scientist 20 June 615/1 The Lick Observatory conclusion was entirely spurious, the result of undetected ‘wow’ in the tape recorder used.

1971 Wireless World Oct. 478/1 Wow can be caused by a badly eccentric or warped record.

1982 Listener 16 Dec. 34/2 Insist on listening to some music, preferably piano music that shows up wow and flutter especially well.

1920 Collier's 11 Dec. 21/1 In Round Five they stalled some more... The sixth innin' was a wow!

1926 Amer. Speech 1 437/1 When an act proves to be such a wow that it is forced to respond to encore after encore and the remainder of the acts on the program must wait until the audience will allow them to go on, it is said to ‘stop the show cold’.

1927 P. G. Wodehouse Small Bachelor vi. 94 ‘A friend of mine tipped me off that this company was a wow’. ‘A what?’ ‘A winner. He said it was going to be big and advised me to come in on the ground floor.’

1944 S. Bellow Dangling Man 54 What a wow of a finish.

1954 C. Churchill Let. 1 Sept. in M. Soames Clementine Churchill (1979) xxvi. 445 Mr Graham Sutherland is a ‘Wow’. He really is a most attractive man.

1962 V. Connaught Secret Heart of Princess Alexandra vii. 73 From that moment forward, she was a wow with every Australian in the land.

1983 D. Francis Danger xvii. 236 Chattering guests all having a wow of a time.

1921 Variety 9 Dec. 31 The wow comedy song... ‘Say It With Liquor’.

1962 John o' London's 1 Mar. 211/2 A chorus of wow reviews from international critics.

1972 Daily Colonist (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 13 Feb. 27/4 Two-foot-high letters inviting you to buy Vitamin E capsules, often at wow potencies, plaster the fronts of drug stores.

1806 R. Jamieson Pop. Ballads I. 234 The wolf wow'd hideous on the hill.

1824 W. Carr Horæ Momenta Cravenæ Wow, to howl.

1900 C. Lee Cynthia v. 69 You should hear her wow, just like an owld cat!

1924 Variety 24 Dec. 14/5 He doesn't wow 'em at any time and seems misplaced in the show.

1938 E. B. White Let. 20 Dec. (1976) 191 Your Hollywood visit piece (which I had never read) wowed me.

1949 Time 19 Sept. 45/3 She wowed them with a dramatic reading of the death scene from Romeo and Juliet.

1950 R. P. Blesh & H. Janis They all played Ragtime ii. 44 The ragtime pianists were already ‘wowing’ their audiences with syncopated renderings of the classics.

1961 Sunday Express 12 Mar. 14/5 Yet another new look..wowed London last week.

1980 Times 17 June 13/3 They are unlikely to wow anybody who does not already respond to Burne-Jones's rather wan charms.

1984 Daily Tel. 25 Sept. 11/4 Mr Macdonald, who supplied the off-screen commentary for this year's Channel 4 coverage of the SDP conference, had the bright notion of training up a novice speaker who would wow them at Buxton.

1892 H. R. Haggard Nada the Lily v. 35 Wow! my father, of those two regiments not one escaped.

1896 G. Ade Artie 8 ‘The girls—wow!’ ‘Beauties, eh?’ ‘Lollypaloozers!’

1916 J. J. Bell Little Grey Ships 17 ‘Wow!’ exclaimed the young seaman..‘Wish I was in Egypt. How's this for cold, old Bill?’

1931 R. Campbell Georgiad i. 11 Bang on your nose my spectacles appear And (Wow!) an earring slits my tender ear.

1941 J. D. Carr Case of Constant Suicides i. 17 A brown-haired girl..straightened up to stare at him. ‘Wow!’ said Alan inaudibly.

1962 E. Cleaver in A. Dundes Mother Wit (1973) 20/1 Wow, what a sight that would be!

1980 ‘R. B. Dominic’ Attending Physician xxiv. 217 ‘Wow!’ Mike Isham whistled reverently. ‘No wonder she was willing to murder.’

1963 Mad Mag. July 23/2 Boy! Wow-wee! That's quite an exciting evening line-up!

1975 R. H. Rimmer Premar Exper. (1976) iii. 216 Bren was jubilant. ‘My big sister is pregnant. Wow-ee! Unbelievable! Fantastic!’

1981 R. Barnard Sheer Torture iii. 29 He had served on the Arts Council Music Panel, 1958–60. Wowee!

1921 S. Ford Inez & Trilby May xvi. 279 Think of the row that will start when it comes out that this is an inside job, with a princess playing the star part. Wowey!