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#127882 04/28/04 11:53 AM
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stranger
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I am currently writing a local history book for our fourth graders and have employed the expression "smack-dab in the middle" in the text.

I can find the definition...but not the origin of this phrase. Does anyone know the origin?
My dictionary simply says "slang for directly or squarely".



#127883 04/28/04 12:02 PM
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Welcome aBoard, angelnanc, especially with such an iteresting question.

Over here in the UK, we say "slap-bang" in the middle - meaning precisely the same as the definition that you give.

I have no idea of its derivation, but personally associate it with the air raids of the Second World War, when bombs were said to drop, "slap-bang" in the middle of a factory, or housing estate or whatever. If this is where it started, the derivation is fairly clear, I think.


#127884 04/28/04 01:24 PM
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Well Rhuby, I would have said the same as you, but looking at the Cambridge and the OED, *they say that the expression slap-bang is indicative of excessive and reckless speed rather than exact positioning whereas smack-dab is given in the Cambridge as ‘straight or directly’. No derivation is given for either term but the first usage of slap-bang recorded in the OED is given as 1833.

There is also reference, dated as 1785, to a slap-bang shop. A squalid eating-place where you were required to put down your money on the counter at time of placing the order. I wonder if they sold the first Big-Macs .



#127885 04/29/04 11:27 AM
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I would have thought that a slap-bang shop was somewhere where you might find a Conservative cabinet minister after hours ...


#127886 04/29/04 12:37 PM
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oh, my


#127887 04/29/04 04:21 PM
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I would have thought that a slap-bang shop was somewhere where you might find a Conservative cabinet minister after hours ...

And I thought they called 'em Clubs. Or maybe that's only at St James'...


#127888 04/29/04 04:38 PM
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You might get an Edwina Curry there perhaps?


#127889 04/30/04 10:02 AM
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(It would be a major attraction, without a doubt)



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