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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