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smack

UK/smæk/US/smæk/
verbB13 meaningsCommon in everyday speech and writing · #2,555 of 15,258mostly spoken

Other forms: smacks, smacked, smacking

To smack is to hit somebody or something with the flat of your hand. Smack the table, a smack on the leg, smacked him.

Smacking children is now illegal in Scotland, Wales and much of Europe, and the word appears constantly in that debate. It also names the sound: the smack of a ball on a bat. Smack of means to suggest something unpleasant: it smacks of favouritism. As an adverb it means directly: smack in the middle. Note that smack is also slang for heroin, which is unrelated and worth knowing about.

Definitions of smack

  1. 1verbsmackTo hit with the flat of the hand.B1

    “He smacked the table and everybody stopped talking.”

  2. 2verbsuggestTo suggest something unpleasant.C1

    “The whole arrangement smacks of a deal done beforehand.”

  3. 3nounblowA blow with the flat hand, or its sound.B1

    “There was a smack as the ball hit the fence.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

smack is a sharp flat blow.

Where it comes from

The word is imitative — it is the sound of a flat hand. English has a whole family of these: slap, whack, thwack and crack, all coined by ear rather than descent.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *smegʰ-,*smeg- — to taste

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *smakkuz — a taste

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *smakku

  4. Old English

    smæc,smæċċ — taste, smatch

  5. Middle English

    smac,smak,smacke

  6. English, today

    smack

The noun is from Middle English smac,smak,smacke, from Old English smæc,smæċċ (“taste, smatch”), from Proto-West Germanic smakku, from Proto-Germanic smakkuz (“a taste”), from Proto-Indo-European smegʰ-,smeg- (“to taste”). The verb is from Middle English smaken. a doublet of smatch (obsolete, “taste”;), from smæċċan. Cognate with Scots smak (“scent, smell, taste, flavour”), stq Smoak (“taste”), West Frisian smaak (“taste”), Dutch smaak (“taste”), German Schmack, Geschmack (“taste”), Danish smag (“taste”), Swedish - and Norwegian smak (“taste”), Norwegian smekke*.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Hitting & Pushing

Practise this word

smack in the wild

  • Many larger smacks were originally cutter-rigged sailing boats until about 1865, when smacks had become so large that cutter main booms had grown unwieldy.

    Smack (ship)

  • Large numbers of smacks operated in fleets from ports in the UK such as Brixham, Grimsby and Lowestoft as well as at locations along the Thames Estuary.

    Smack (ship)

  • A coin-matching game (also a coin smack or smack game) is a confidence trick in which two con artists set up one victim.

    Coin-matching game

  • Slapping or smacking is striking a person with the open palm of the hand, in a movement known as a slap or smack.

    Slapping (strike)

  • I like to think of 'Sister Ray' as a transvestite smack dealer.

    Sister Ray

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.