The Spanking in Brand Spanking New

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is David from Wyoming.

Hi, David from Wyoming.

Welcome to the show. How can we help?

I was wondering about brand spanking new.

What is new in your life that made you think of that?

Nothing. I was just wondering because I’d heard it before.

All right. Any theories about brand spanking new?

Because I know there’s one thing that people think of when they think about something that’s new and involves spanking.

Yeah, I think of a baby.

Yeah, most of us, we think of that like the Warner Brothers cartoons with the baby being born and getting smacked on the bum, right, and squalling.

It’s not related to the origin of brand spanking new, though, interestingly enough.

It turns out that spanking used as an adjective to mean good or great or big or fine or amazing goes back to the late 1600s and probably has nothing to do with spanking, like smacking on the bottom at all.

It probably is related to a similar words in Danish, spanka, which means to strut, S-P-A-N-K-E, which is cool.

But we find over the history of the word, it went from meaning very good or big or fine just to being used as an emphasizeser.

Throw it in front of another adjective and it will just make it more of itself.

So brand spanking new means very new or spanking new or spanking big I’ve seen as well means very big.

Huh. So spanking in that sense originally meant to strut?

Possible. It’s related to a Danish word to strut.

So that’s a cognate on the side, but not necessarily the origin of it.

It is basically origin unknown, but we do find it as early as 1600 spanking, meaning very fine, good, big, or great.

Not what I thought it was.

Yeah, you know, me neither. I can’t believe that I didn’t already know this before I dug into the term.

Because we have all these other terms that you may know where we use to emphasize or to stress or…

Yeah, that have to do with striking, like larapin.

Have you heard that one, being there in Wyoming?

That’s a larapin good pie.

Yeah.

It comes from a Dutch word that means to beat or strike.

What about, we had a thumping good time.

I’ve heard that.

Yeah.

Or not used very often.

Or just striking.

Yeah, or striking or whopping.

There’s a few whacking.

We have all these terms that seem to be related to hitting something,

But they’re actually just used to emphasize.

How about that, David?

Cool.

That answers my question.

All right.

That’s what we’re after.

Thanks for calling.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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