bang to rights
- idiom
- Informal
:
con las manos en la masa
- Well done, though, you caught me bang to rights!
Examples
-
You've got WW bang to rights as we say over here, you sly vixen!
Blog text (4) -
If this comes down to hurt feelings, then on paper they have him bang to rights; Wilders is guilty as charged.
Blog text (6) -
The police found him bang to rights in the act of stealing a car.
-
After reviewing the footage, they realized they had him bang to rights with the evidence against him.
-
She saw him vandalizing the wall and knew she had him bang to rights.
Synonyms
24
3.8
Caught in the act of doing something wrong with clear proof
11
8.6
Caught clearly doing something wrong
9
4.6
Discovered while doing something wrong or illegal
5
3.7
Someone finds a person while they are doing something wrong
Antonyms
How Certain
- Formal
921
4.0
- Informal
∞
3.4
∞
2.7
382
3.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
bang + to + right
The literal parts ('bang' as a sound or strike, 'to' as a preposition, and 'right' as correctness or entitlement) do not combine to produce the sense 'caught in the act with proof'; the lexical meanings give no clear path to the idiomatic result. This is an informal, language-specific idiom (similar to 'caught red-handed') and so a B1 learner who knows the individual words would not reliably infer the MWE's meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
Bang to rights may come from old police talk: bang meant a sudden, sure action and to rights meant 'made secure', so the picture is of someone quickly caught and held with clear proof. That's why the phrase means 'caught in the act with definite proof'.