Definition of "smack"

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., […], 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, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, The Bodley Head, published 1906

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

Claude overdosed on smack in a Chicago flophouse three years later.

2019, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Fleet, page 191

He soon smacked the taste of physic hidden in this sweetness.

1827, Thomas Carlyle (translator), Johann August Musæus, "Melechsala" (1782-86); in German Romance I. 175

He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were battening upon our quarter-of-a-penny loaf — our crug — moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden piggings, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from.

1820-25, Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia

All sects, all ages, smack of this vice.

c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene ii]

But without Union reinforcement, as many men as could be packed into a mere fishing smack could take the fort, Meigs wrote to Washington.

2009, Simon Schama, The American Future: A History

he took the bride about the neck. And kissed her lips with such a clamorous smack.

c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene ii]

Then he told them of the princess, how she came to him, and how much she had to kiss him to get the whistle, when nobody saw or heard it over in the wood - "I must get on with these lies if the vat is to be full," said Ashiepattle, - so he told them about the queen, how stingy she was with the money and how liberal she was with kisses, that one could hear the smacks all over the wood.

1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 178

A horse neighed, and a whip smacked, there was a whistle, and the sound of a cart wheel.

1832, Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming

But when, obedient to the mode / Of panegyric, courtly ode / The bard bestrides, his annual hack, / In vain I taste, and sip and smack, / I find no flavour of the Sack.

1763, Robert Lloyd, “A Familiar Epistle”, in St. James Magazine