Other forms: spanking, spanked, spanks
To spank is to smack somebody on the bottom as punishment. Spank a child, got spanked, a spanking.
Spanking children is now unlawful in Scotland and Wales and in much of Europe, and remains a contested subject elsewhere. The word is used almost entirely of children. As a noun, a spanking is the punishment, and in sport a spanking also means a heavy defeat. Note spanking as an old-fashioned intensifier meaning very — spanking new, at a spanking pace — which is entirely unrelated and harmless.
1verbspankTo smack somebody on the bottom as punishment.
“Nobody has been spanked in that school since about 1985.”
2nounheavyA heavy defeat.
“Our team took a real spanking in the final, losing six nil.”
spank is a smacking.
The word appeared in the eighteenth century and is imitative, like smack and whack. The intensifier sense came from a separate sense of spanking meaning moving briskly, which is why spanking new means brand new.
unknown. Possibly imitative of the sound, or perhaps a special use of Etymology 2 (below) in the sense of a horse stamping its foot against the ground. There is no evidence of a relation with espancar.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire