Slap-bang

in sport, means that the gun was discharged incessantly; it went slap here and bang there. As a term of laudation it means “very dashing,” both words being playful synonyms of “dashing,” the repetition being employed to give intensity. Slap-bang, here we are again, means, we have “popped” in again without ceremony. Pop, slap, bang, and dash are interchangeable.

⁂ Dickens uses the word to signify a low eating-house.

“They lived in the same street, walked to town every morning at the same hour, dined at the same slap-bang every day.”

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.