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Comment by watwut | Hacker News Reader

Spanking is when hit them repeatedly. Beating is when you hit people repeatedly.

The only difference is rituál around it.

Spanking specifically means open-palm slaps on the ass, though. It's done in such a way as to inflict pain without injury (as opposed to beating).

It's a little absurd that this needs to be explained to adults.

It's because the only people conflating the two are deliberately doing so in bad faith to score political points.

Belt spanking is spanking. Paddle spanking is spanking.

It was literally never true that the word would refer to beating a kid by open hand only. The books that teach parents to spank also give advice to use instruments and call it spanking.

Old books that contain spanking use the word beating as synonyms. It started to be used as different word when people started to take issue with it more often.

I agree with you that paddles or switches can be used for "spanking", and that "spanking" is a form of "beating", but still the words are different. "Spanking" strongly implies that it is done to cause pain without serious or permanent injury. "Beating" has no such limitation.

I agree that it is not the right way to discipline a child, but I can recognize this distinction in meaning.

I find this interesting, actually, as a form of argument. The annihilation of semantic categories. It's like argument via Sapir-Whorf.

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