smack of jellyfish

The day began with a story about a smack of lion’s mane jellyfish in Port Phillip Bay.  Apparently there are a wide variety of these jellyfish ranging from monsters as big as a fridge in Antarctica to the small red ones that normally inhabit the bay.  They are there in profusion at the moment.  So I noted lion’s mane jellyfish which I was pretty sure was not in the Macquarie Dictionary and then checked smack to see what the origin of the word was.

I found it under smack meaning ‘a taste or flavour’, a word going back to Old English.  This seemed unlikely so I looked up the Oxford English Dictionary where it did not appear at all. I googled and found helpful suggestions that gave you a choice.  Either it came from smack meaning ‘a slap’ because the sting of the jellyfish was like a sharp slap.  Or it came from smack meaning ‘a small portion’. Or it is related to smuck meaning ‘a gelatinous texture’.

None of this was helpful so I asked ChatGBT  (known as Chad in our household) — ‘Is smack for a number of jellyfish an Australianism?’ Chad came back very firmly saying that it was not.  It was simply an extension of the older British English smack for a large number of fish, equivalent to a shoal.

‘So why isn’t it in the OED’, I asked.  ‘Well spotted’, said Chad ‘but can I point out that not everything is in the OED. The editors would have thought it was covered by smack for a shoal.’

‘But I can’t find that either’ I said.  ‘Yes', said Chad, ‘because it isn’t there, but what is there is smack for a fishing vessel and so smack for the large number of fish (that you might have caught in your fishing smack) is an extension of that.’

I told Chad that I thought that was extremely dubious etymologising and Chad pleasantly agreed, confirming that the expression a smack of jellyfish was nowhere to be found in British English and therefore not in the OED. ‘The OED editors would have required some evidence of a link between the smack as a boat and the smack as a shoal.’

‘So would I, Chad. So would I. So can I say that smack is an Australianism?’ I repeated.

Chad replied: ‘Yes — given the evidence, it’s safest to call it an Australianism or at least a regional usage in Australia and possibly other Anglophone areas, rather than a standard British English term. But don’t state that categorically. Adopt an academic or lexicographical style and just suggest that this might be a possibility.’

Since Chad has come full circle I can now venture into my own etymologising. My researches into the English Dialect Dictionary revealed a Scottish word smacher meaning ‘a confused crowd or jumbled collection’.  The Scots had a big influence in settling Victoria so a number of words have entered Australian English from the Scots dialect through that connection.  I am suggesting that smack is the shortened form of smacher, which is at least as plausible as all the other suggestions.  (That’s me not being categorical!).