I witnessed an include saying "This iphone phone is brand spanking new" which sound like "brand * new".

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I am not certain if this word has correct grammar + polite (ie civilization use it without any kind of bad or hoax meaning)


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There"s no link to spank = slap, smack . OED states of spanking...

Etymology: Of cynical origin. Compare Danish (and north Frisian) spanke to strut.

Their first citation for sense 1: Very big, large, or fine; exceptionally good in some respect, freq. V implication that showiness or smartness. is 1666.

The much more specific sense 5: Used as adv. Very, exceedingly; esp. Together spanking new, brand-new is first recorded in 1886.

Note the all these adjectival/adverbial usages are designated Chiefly dial. And also colloq. by OED.

EDIT: This NGram evidenced my hesitation that a significant proportion of every instances that the very common spanking new happen as brand spanking new. Yet by much the much more common phrasing is brand new - extant 1570, initial metaphoric allusion unknown to many speakers today. It appears a bit odd the we have the right to just slot spanking right into the middle of a well-established collection phrase prefer that.

Possibly, in the psychic of some speakers spanking has actually connotations of smacking, striking, yet it"s really simply a syntactic facet (function word?) who sole purpose is to increase an nearby semantic element that in reality has "meaning" (in this case, either the adjective new, or the collection phrase brand new, depending exactly how you see it).

Although OED offers very, exceedingly as "definitions/synonyms", idiomatically you can"t simply substitute one of two people of those in brand ???? new. The just syntactically/semantically compatible word I have the right to come up v is brand fucking new (which despite vulgar is perfectly precious grammatically).

To me, the consumption brand spanking new seems to reflect the of fucking and also abso-bloody-lutely i.e. - an intensifier is "infixed" into a single word or collection phrase.

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I was as such gratified to uncover my guess because that a credible usage was abso-spanking-lutely clues on! There"s a couple of dozen human being who"ve also noticed that reasonably uncommon construction flexibility enabling "infixed intensifier" usage - without the potential limit of vulgar fucking, bloody.