Harry slapped Hugo, Tracey smacked Richie: The semantics of slap and smack

This article analyzes and compares the meanings of two English contact verbs: slap and smack. Although they are sometimes regarded as synonymous in their primary senses, evidence is adduced to show that each verb has a distinct meaning. Corpus data are used to identify the everyday patterns of each verb's use and the analysis and discussion focus on the syntactic and semantic implications of these patterns. Attention is also given to the social and cultural factors that have influenced the way people think about the actions described by the verbs. Meanings are expressed in explications using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), which uses reductive paraphrase to describe each verb in terms of simpler prime concepts; this allows direct comparison of their semantic content. Slap and smack are shown to share many salient semantic features but, at the same time, to have unique characteristics which make them capable of distinctive description. Their prototypical meanings provide a strong conceptual foundation for other senses, including metaphorical uses.