Month: October 2025

Q: What is the meaning of “smack” in a sentence like “it smacked of bigotry”?

A: When something “smacks of bigotry,” it has a trace or a suggestion of bigotry, a usage that dates back to the earliest days of English.

When the word “smack” was first recorded in Old English (spelled smæc), it was a noun meaning a taste or a flavor. When the verb appeared in Middle English, to “smack” meant to perceive by the sense of taste, but it could also be used figuratively in the sense of to experience or suggest something.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots says the word ultimately comes from the prehistoric Germanic base smak- and the Proto-Indo-European base smeg-, both meaning to taste.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “smack” was originally a noun in Old English meaning “a taste or flavour; the distinctive or peculiar taste of something, or a special flavour distinguishable from this.”

The first OED citation is from a 10th-century glossary of Latin and Old English, where the Latin “Dulcis sapor, i. dulcis odor” (“Sweet taste, i.e, sweet smell”) is rendered in Old English as “swete smæc” (“sweet taste or flavor”). From Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies (2d ed, 1884), edited by Thomas Wright and Richard Paul Wülcker.

When the verb “smack” entered Middle English in the 14th century, Oxford says, it meant “to perceive by the sense of taste” and figuratively “to experience; to suspect.” In the dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, it’s used figuratively to mean perceive or experience the sweetness of God:

“And uorzoþe huo þet hedde wel ytasted and ysmacked þe ilke zuetnesse þet god yefþ to his urendes he ssolde onworþi alle þe lostes and alle þe blissen of þise wordle” (“And forsooth whoever has tasted and smacked [experienced] the same sweetness that God gives to his friends, he should scorn all the desires and all the blessings of this world”).

From Ayenbite of Inwyt (“Remorse of Conscience”), a 1340 translation by Michel of Northgate of a French devotional guide, La Somme des Vices et des Vertus (1279), by Laurent du Bois.

In the late 14th century, Oxford says, the verb took on various meanings in reference to food, liquor, and other beverages: “To taste (well or ill); to have a (specified) taste or flavour; to taste or savour of something.” Here’s the earliest citation:

“Som bitter þinges … þat smakkeþ of aloye” (“Some bitter things … that smack [taste] of aloe”). From John Trevisa’s 1398 translation of De Proprietatibus Rerum (“On the Properties of Things”), an encyclopedic Latin work compiled by Bartholomew de Glanville in 1240.

The “taste” sense of “smack,” perhaps influenced by developments in other Germanic languages, may have led to the word’s use for sounds made when noisily eating, kissing, and hitting.

In the mid-16th century, the OED says, the verb “smack” came to mean “to open or separate (the lips) in such a way as to produce a sharp sound; to do this in connection with eating or drinking, esp. as a sign of keen relish or anticipation.”

The first Oxford example is from The Babees Book (1557), by Francis Seager, in a section entitled “How to Behave at One’s Own Dinner”: “Not smackynge thy lyppes, As comonly do hogges.”

The verb soon took on the sense of to kiss noisily: “To Smacke, kisse, suauiare” (from Manipulus Vocabulorum, an English-Latin dictionary compiled in 1570 by the English lexicographer Peter Levens).

In the early 17th century, “smack” took on the sense of “to partake or savour of, to be strongly suggestive or reminiscent of, something,” the OED says.

Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure, believed written in 1603 or 1604: “All Sects, all Ages smack [partake] of this vice.” The vice here is sex outside of marriage.

It wasn’t until the 19th century that “smack” came to mean “to strike (a person, part of the body, etc.) with the open hand or with something having a flat surface; to slap,” Oxford says.

The first citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from a sketch by Charles Dickens about a London slum. It appeared first in the weekly Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (Sept. 27, 1835), and later in Sketches by Boz (1836), Dickens’s first book:

“Mrs. A. smacks Mrs. B.’s child for ‘making faces.’ Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water over Mrs. A.’s child for ‘calling names.’ ”

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Q: The expression “as I alluded to earlier” has been rife amongst sports broadcasters and now seems to have spread beyond that sphere. Is the use of “allude” for a direct reference another case where popular misuse leads to acceptance?

A: The verb “allude” meant to suggest or hint when it first appeared in Middle English in the late 15th century. In the early 16th century, it took on the senses of to mention indirectly, fancifully, or figuratively. And a few decades later, it came to mean to use wordplay or to pun.

The fanciful, figurative and punning senses, which are now obsolete, reflect the Latin source of the term, alludere, which meant to make a playful comment. As you can see, the verb “allude” has been a work in progress from its earliest days. And it’s not at all surprising that it still is.

Yes, many people are using “allude” these days to mean refer directly, and some usage guides accept that sense of the word. But most standard dictionaries and style manuals still say “allude” means to refer indirectly or casually.

Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage recognize as standard English the use of “allude” to mean refer either directly or indirectly.

Fowler’s, edited by Jeremy Butterfield, says, “It has been claimed by some critics that to allude to someone or something can only properly mean to mention them ‘indirectly or covertly,’ i.e. without mentioning their name, unlike refer, which means to mention them directly, i.e. by name.”

“But in practice,” Fowler’s goes on to say, allude is often used to mean ‘refer,’ e.g. He had star quality, an element often alluded to in Arlene’s circle of show-biz friends—Gore Vidal, 1978 [from the post-apocalyptic novel Kalki].” The usage guide concludes: “This use is well established and perfectly acceptable.”

Merriam-Webster’s challenges the “false assumption” that “the ignorant and uneducated are responsible for the ‘direct’ sense,” and provides examples of its use by “speakers and writers of high cultivation.”

Here’s an early example: “He never alluded so directly to his story again” (from Edward Everett Hale’s short story “The Man Without a Country,” 1863).

The usage guide says the “direct” use of “allude” is “simply a logical extension from the indirect use, and indeed is an inevitable development” because the verb was often used ambiguously by established writers.

It cites a half-dozen examples in which “allude” is used in “contexts in which it is not possible to know for certain whether the word is to be taken in its ‘indirect’ sense or not.”

Here’s one from Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence (1920): “it was against all the rules of their code that the mother and son should ever allude to what was uppermost in their thoughts.”

However, Merriam-Webster says the direct use of “allude” hasn’t “driven the old subtle sense out of the language.” It cites this example, which we’ve expanded here, from “Why I Write,” an essay by Joan Didion in The New York Times Book Review (Dec. 5, 1976):

“You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions—with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating—but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.”

As for other views, Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.) says “allude” means “to refer to (something) indirectly or by suggestion only.” It says the verb “is misused for refer when the indirect nature of a comment or suggestion is missing.”

And Pat, in her grammar and usage guide Woe Is I (4th ed.) says: “To allude is to mention indirectly or to hint at—to speak of something in a covert or roundabout way. Cyril suspected that the discussion of bad taste alluded to his loud pants. To refer to something is to mention directly. ‘They’re plaid!’ said Gussie, referring to Cyril’s trousers.” 

If there’s a 5th edition of Woe, Pat may recommend avoiding “allude” when there’s any  chance of ambiguity. There are many alternatives, including “refer,” “mention,” and “indicate” for the direct sense, and “suggest,” “hint,” and “imply” for the indirect sense.

And if you do use “allude,” make clear whether you mean refer directly or indirectly, as Didion did when she used it indirectly in her essay and Hale did when he used it directly in his short story cited above.

As for the etymology, “allude” is derived from the classical Latin alludere (“to play with, to make a playful or mocking allusion to, to jest”), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. When the verb first appeared in English in the 15th century, it meant “to suggest, hint, hint at.”

The OED’s earliest English citation, which uses “alluding” to mean “suggesting,” is from John Skelton’s late Middle English translation (circa 1487) of the 40-volume Bibliotheca Historica, written by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Sicily) in the first century BC:

“Ne none so covenable a name in theire supposell vnto it can be appropried, as to call it ambrosia … alludyng by that worde enwarde dilectation” (“Nor can any name be more fitting, in their opinion, to call it than ‘ambrosia’ … alluding by that word an inner delight”).

In the early 16th century, the OED says, “allude” took on the sense of “to make an oblique or indirect reference to, to refer indirectly or in passing to.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from a 1531 letter by George Joye, an English Protestant writer living in exile in Antwerp. In the letter, Joye responds to charges of heresy made against him by John Ashwell, the prior of Newnham Abbey in Bedfordshire:

“Christe called his Gospel & holy worde the keye of knowlege or keyes in the plural noumber of the kingdom of heauen alluding vnto the double propertye that one keye hathe both to open and to shutte.”

In that same letter, Oxford says, Joye used “allude” in a sense closer to its Latin source: to “refer (something) fancifully or figuratively to; to compare (something) symbolically.” The dictionary’s first citation expands on Joye’s earlier comment about keys:

“The propertye of a keye is to open that which before was shitte thus doth Luce allude & agre his speach with the propertys of a keye” (“The property of a key is to open that which before was shut, thus doth [the Apostle] Luke allude and agree [symbolize and align] his words with the properties of a key”).

In the mid-16th century, the OED says, “allude” came to mean “to make a play on words; to pun.” The first citation is from The Castle of Knowledge (1556), by the mathematician Robert Recorde:

“There canne be no such allusion of woordes in the englyshe … except a man wold rather allude at the woordes, than expresse the sentence.”

As we’ve noted earlier, the figurative and punning senses of “allude” are now obsolete. However, the OED says the early 16th-century meaning “to make an oblique or indirect reference” evolved “(esp. in later use): to refer in any manner”—that is, to refer directly or indirectly.

We’ll end with a few words from Mrs. Wilfer in Our Mutual Friend (1864-65), Charles Dickens’s final completed novel:

“ ‘The mind,’ pursued Mrs Wilfer in an oratorical manner, ‘naturally reverts to Papa and Mamma—I here allude to my parents.’ ”

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