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Glite Dictionary
🖐️ To hit a device 🙈 To masturbate
to spank it

to spank it

9.9
Hit a device like a TV or remote lightly to try to make it work again
  • phrasal verb
  • Informal
translation icon : darle un golpecito
  • Just spank it gently to see if it works.

Examples

  • Sometimes, when the old TV won't turn on, you just have to spank it.

  • If your printer jams again, don't be afraid to spank it gently.

  • He tried everything to fix the remote before resorting to spanking it.

  • Sometimes, you just need to spank it to fix the TV.

  • When the TV stopped working, he decided to spank it to see if that would fix the issue.

  • I had to spank it a couple of times before the old radio finally turned on.

  • If your printer is acting up, sometimes just spanking it lightly can help get it started.

Antonyms

to ignore
∞ 1.0

Choose not to pay attention to someone or something

How Hard

to whack
250 5.5
knock
32 1.0
to spank it
  • Informal
9.9
tap
66 1.0

Surface Forms

spank it infinitive
spanked it past
spanked it past participle
spanking it present participle
spanks it third person singular

Morphology

spank + it

The literal parts 'spank' (to hit/slap) and 'it' (a pronoun) do not compositionally yield the meaning 'to masturbate'; this is a slang euphemism whose sexual sense is idiomatic and culture-specific. A B1 learner who knows the constituents but has not been exposed to the slang sense would not reliably infer this meaning, so the expression is opaque.

Etymology

Spank it comes from the image of giving a quick, light slap to a machine to make it start. People would spank a stubborn gadget as if waking it up, so the phrase means 'to give a light slap to a malfunctioning device in hopes of making it work again'.