When you’re smack dab in the middle of something, you can’t be more in the middle of it. But can you be further from it?
Listener Brent Wagner recently came across "smack dab" smack dab in the middle of a New York Times article:
"I hadn’t heard that expression for years, and I was surprised to read it in the Times...the usage was something like ’smack dab in the middle of the city…’ It’s a phrase that’s fun to say, especially for emphasis with a degree of surprise, and I’m wondering how it originated."
Even though Wagner hadn't heard it in awhile, "smack dab" is definitely out there and has actually been on the rise since the 1980s, according to Google Books. This phrase isn't new though. Green's Dictionary of Slang has evidence of it as far back as 1839.
"Smack dab” seems to to have evolved from the British expression "slap bang" which goes back to the late 1700s. "Slap bang” could mean “vigorously” or “without delay,” but it could also refer to something positioned exactly somewhere, just as we use “smack dab” today. Another variant, "slap dab" can be found in both British and American English as a way to say "headlong" or "exactly."
All four of the words that make up these phrases — "slap," "smack," "dab," and "bang" — are related to physical striking. Each can also be used alone to pinpoint location. For example, "smack in the middle," "right dab in the middle," "bang in the middle," and "slap in the middle." Those uses may not all sound familiar, but they're out there.
A few days after noticing "smack dab" in The New York Times, our listener Brent Wagner came across it again in The Saturday Evening Post. This time, the location it referenced wasn't quite so precise: “Smack dab near the midpoint between Iceland and Sweden, just on the outskirts of the town of Lancaster in England, there is a place called the Babylab.”
Since the writer is clearly describing somewhere not exactly at the midpoint but, rather, close to it, Wagner wondered whether we considered that a misuse of the term or if it mitigated some of its impact. To hear our thoughts on that as well as our discussion about whether "smack dab" needs a preposition, listen to the audio above.
