smack

• IPA^(key): /smæk/

• Audio (AU)

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• Rhymes: -æk

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

smack (countable and uncountable, plural smacks)

1. A distinct flavor, especially if slight.

   rice pudding with a smack of cinnamon

   • 1873 January 23, Robert Browning, “Part IV”, in Red Cotton Night-Cap Country: Or Turf and Towers, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 245:

     I did not call him fool, and vex my friend, / But quietly allowed experiment, / Encouraged him to dust his drink, and now / Grate lignum vitæ now bruise so-called grains / Of Paradise, and now, for perfume, pour / Distilment rare, the rose of Jericho, / Holy-thorn, passion-flower, and what know I? / Till beverage obtained the fancied smack.

   • 1896, A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, “(please specify the poem number)”, in A Shropshire Lad, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, The Bodley Head, published 1906, →OCLC:

     But take it: if the smack is sour / The better for the embittered hour; […]

2. A slight trace of something; a smattering.
   • 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:

     He was not sailorly, and yet he had a smack of the sea about him too.

   • 1906, Oliver Elton, Frederick York Powell: A Life and a Selection from His Letters and Occasional Writings, page 249:

     I like my cousins in Holland immensely, but I feel more sib to the Northerners. Your description of Lofoten is fine. I can see them. They must be enchanting in their way, cod's head and tails or no. There is a fine eau de Javelle smack about a Dutch canal, by the way, that takes […]

3. (slang, uncountable) Heroin.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:heroin

   • 2019, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Fleet, page 191:

     Claude overdosed on smack in a Chicago flophouse three years later.

4. (Northern England) A form of fried potato; a scallop.

• foresmack
• smackless
• smackhead

smack (third-person singular simple present smacks, present participle smacking, simple past and past participle smacked)

1. (transitive) To get the flavor of.
   • 1827, Thomas Carlyle (translator), Johann August Musæus, "Melechsala" (1782-86); in German Romance I. 175

     He soon smacked the taste of physic hidden in this sweetness.

2. (intransitive) To have a particular taste; used with of.
   • 1820-25, Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia

     He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were battening upon our quarter-of-a-penny loaf — our crug — moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden piggings, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from.

3. (intransitive) To indicate or suggest something; used with of.

   Her reckless behavior smacks of pride.

   • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:

     All sects, all ages, smack of this vice.

Smacks in a painting by Carlton Theodore Chapman, ca 1890 (Brooklyn Museum of Art).

From Middle Low German smack (Low German Schmacke, Schmaake (“small ship”)) or Dutch smak, perhaps ultimately related to smakken, imitative of the sails' noise.

smack (plural smacks)

1. A small sailing vessel, commonly rigged as a sloop, used chiefly in the coasting and fishing trade and often called a fishing smack
   • 2009, Simon Schama, The American Future: A History:

     But without Union reinforcement, as many men as could be packed into a mere fishing smack could take the fort, Meigs wrote to Washington.

2. A group of jellyfish.

• fishing-smack

• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “smack”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

From Middle Dutch smacken, of imitative origin.

Akin to German schmatzen (“eat noisily”), Dutch smakken (“to fling down”), Plautdietsch schmaksen (“to smack the lips”), regional German schmacken, Schmackes (“vigour”) (compare Swedish smak (“slap”), Middle Low German smacken, the first part of Saterland Frisian smakmuulje (“smack”)).

smack (plural smacks)

1. A sharp blow; a slap. See also: spank.
2. The sound of a loud kiss.
   • c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:

     he took the bride about the neck. And kissed her lips with such a clamorous smack.

   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 178:

     Then he told them of the princess, how she came to him, and how much she had to kiss him to get the whistle, when nobody saw or heard it over in the wood - "I must get on with these lies if the vat is to be full," said Ashiepattle, - so he told them about the queen, how stingy she was with the money and how liberal she was with kisses, that one could hear the smacks all over the wood.

3. A quick, sharp noise, as of the lips when suddenly separated, or of a whip.

smack (third-person singular simple present smacks, present participle smacking, simple past and past participle smacked)

1. To slap or hit someone.
2. To make a smacking sound.
   • 1832, Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming:

     A horse neighed, and a whip smacked, there was a whistle, and the sound of a cart wheel.

3. (especially outside of North America) To strike a child (usually on the buttocks) as a form of discipline. (normal U.S. and Canadian term spank)
4. To wetly separate the lips, making a noise, after tasting something or in expectation of a treat.
   • 1763, Robert Lloyd, “A Familiar Epistle”, in St. James Magazine:

     But when, obedient to the mode / Of panegyric, courtly ode / The bard bestrides, his annual hack, / In vain I taste, and sip and smack, / I find no flavour of the Sack.

5. To kiss with a close compression of the lips, so as to make a sound when they separate.

smack (not comparable)

1. As if with a smack or slap; smartly; sharply.

   Right smack in the middle.

• smack bang
• smack-dab

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.

• Macks, macks

smack n

1. (in the phrase "inte ett smack") smidgeon, piece, small bit

• inte ett smack

• smack in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• smack in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• smack in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)

• macks

From Middle English smaken.

• IPA^(key): /smak/

smack

1. to smack
   • 1867, “THE WEDDEEN O BALLYMORE”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 5, page 96:

     To his sweethearth, an smack lick a dab of a brough.

     To his sweetheart, and smacked like a slap of a shoe.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 96