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".

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.

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 .

I would have thought that a slap-bang shop was somewhere where you might find a Conservative cabinet minister after hours ...

oh, my

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'...

You might get an Edwina Curry there perhaps?

(It would be a major attraction, without a doubt)