bang to rights

English

Alternative forms

• banged to rights

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Etymology 1

From bang (“completely”) +‎ to rights (“properly”). Originally US; attested from the start of the 20th century.

Adverb

bang to rights (not generally comparable, comparative more bang to rights, superlative most bang to rights)

1. (now chiefly British, idiomatic) Red-handed, (caught) in the act.
   • 1910 December, George Allan England, “The Steeled Conscience”, in The Railroad Man’s Magazine, New York: Frank A. Munsey Co., page 188:

     We had a man once who got caught with a bundle of railroad stocks.
     They got him bang to rights and would have shoved him, only […] when he swore he’d found them, they couldn’t prove he hadn’t.

   • 1919 December 2, Charles W. Tyler, “Raw Silk”, in Detective Stories Magazine, volume XXVIII, New York: Street & Smith, page 29:

     The silk! Hide it! Throw it away! If they get us with that—we’re bang to rights.

   • 2012, Officer ‘A’, The Crime Factory: The Shocking True Story of a Front Line CID Detective, Edinburgh: Mainstream, page 218:

     Looking at the evidence, I’d assumed that the hapless pair was bang to rights and that we’d have little trouble placing him on remand and giving the law-abiding residents of Surrey a brief respite.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bang (adverb), to rights.
   • 2004, Brian S. McWilliams, Spam Kings, Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly Media, published 2005, →ISBN, page 69:

     Once, after a spammer trolled Nanae, accusing antis of having no life, Mad Pierre sarcastically responded that the spammer was correct. ¶ “Damn, you’ve got us bang to rights. We have no lives. None. At all.”

   • 2007, Neil Pearson, Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press, page 479:

     Tyler tries to dismiss Vidal's characterization of him as a pseudo-intellectual buffoon, but succeeds only in demonstrating that Vidal had him bang to rights.

   • 2008, James Buchan, The gate of air:

     He wished he were in London, where a girl in a minicab would set him bang to rights.

Synonyms

• dead to rights

Etymology 2

From reinterpretation of bang (“completely”) as bang (“to handle noisily or violently”).

Verb

bang to rights (third-person singular simple present bangs to rights, present participle banging to rights, simple past and past participle banged to rights)

1. (rare, British, idiomatic) To have sufficient, indisputable evidence that a person's actions are generally perceived to be wrong; to catch red-handed.
   • 2006, Planning, numbers 1650–1666, page 8:

     I am as intent on banging them all to rights as the next bleeding heart middle-class liberal, but take a look at the record so far.

   • 2007 May 26, The Week, 615, 6:

     Good week for: Cyclists, after Britain's most prolific bicycle thief was banged to rights.

   • 2009 February 4, “Batman turns air blue in Terminator tantrum”, in Belfast Telegraph:

     His alter-ego Batman utters nothing more provocative than the occasional “holy smoke” as he bangs adversaries to rights

   • 2010, Peter James, Dead Simple:

     He'd been untouchable for the past decade, but now Roy Grace had finally banged him to rights.

See also

• fair cop