smack – English noun declension

English noun forms of smack

Noun: smack
Singularsmack
Pluralsmacks

Sample Sentences

  • rice pudding with a smack of cinnamon
  • I did not call him fool, and vex my friend, / But quietly allowed experiment, / Encouraged him to dust his drink, and now / Grate lignum vitæ now bruise so-called grains / Of Paradise, and now, for perfume, pour / Distilment rare, the rose of Jericho, / Holy-thorn, passion-flower, and what know I? / Till beverage obtained the fancied smack. [1873 January 23, Robert Browning, “Part IV”, in Red Cotton Night-Cap Country: Or Turf and Towers, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 245:]
  • But take it: if the smack is sour / The better for the embittered hour; […] [1896, A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, “(please specify the poem number)”, in A Shropshire Lad, London: The Richards Press, →OCLC:]
  • He was not sailorly, and yet he had a smack of the sea about him too. [1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:]
  • I like my cousins in Holland immensely, but I feel more sib to the Northerners. Your description of Lofoten is fine. I can see them. They must be enchanting in their way, cod's head and tails or no. There is a fine eau de Javelle smack about a Dutch canal, by the way, that takes[…] [1906, Oliver Elton, Frederick York Powell: A Life and a Selection from His Letters and Occasional Writings, page 249:]
  • Claude overdosed on smack in a Chicago flophouse three years later. [2019, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Fleet, page 191:]

Etymology

1. The noun is from Middle English smac, smak, smacke, from Old English smæc, smæċċ (“taste, smatch”), from Proto-West Germanic *smakku, from Proto-Germanic *smakkuz (“a taste”), from Proto-Indo-European *smegʰ-, *smeg- (“to taste”). The verb is from Middle English smaken. Doublet of smatch (obsolete, “taste”; q.v.), from Old English smæċċan (“to taste, smack”).
2. Cognate with Scots smak (“scent, smell, taste, flavour”), Saterland Frisian Smoak (“taste”), West Frisian smaak (“taste”), Dutch smaak (“taste”), German Schmack, Geschmack (“taste”), Danish smag (“taste”), Swedish and Norwegian smak (“taste”), Norwegian smekke. See: Middle English Nouns 'smac,smak,smacke', Dutch Nouns 'smaak', Danish Nouns 'smag'.

Verbs referencing "smack"

German Nouns Geschmack, Dutch Nouns smak, Icelandic Nouns smekkur, German Nouns Schmackes, Danish Nouns smag, Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns smekk.