slap

slap pronunciation

/SLAP/

Meaning

In redneck and Southern talk, slap is an intensifier. It means straight into, all the way, or right exactly. You worked till slap dark. You ran slap into the gate. The truck sat slap in the middle of the road. Same family as slap-dab and smack-dab, just the short punchy half.

How folks use it

• “We worked till slap dark and still weren't done.”
• “He backed that trailer slap into the fence post.”

Origin and etymology

Comes from the old idea of a slap hitting something square and sudden. As an adverb meaning directly or completely, it shows up in English by the early 1800s. Harold Wentworth's American Dialect Dictionary logged the Southern sense "entirely" with an Alabama-Georgia example: worked till slap dark. Appalachian word lists still mark it as full or complete.

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