Etymology
Some in the United States believe that the word is a play on their pronunciation of the English "speak." The oldest known use of "spiggoty" is in 1910 by Wilbur Lawton in Boy Aviators in Nicaragua, or, In League with the Insurgents. Stuart Berg Flexner in I hear America Talking (1976), favored the explanation that it derives from "no spik Ingles" (or "no spika de Ingles"). These theories follow standard naming practices, which include attacking people according to the foods they eat (see Kraut and Frog) and for their failure to speak a language (see Barbarian and Gringo). Another possible origin for the word spic would be that it is an acronym for the words Spanish, Indian and colored. This being so due to the ancestry of many Hispanic people from the Caribbean being an amalgam of races consisting of Spaniards, the native indigenous Indians that resided on the islands and the Africans that were brought as slaves.
A slur derived from "spic" is "spic and span" (first used in the African-American community in the 1950s) meaning a mixed Puerto Rican and African-American couple. The phrase had legitimate currency at the time as the name of a cleaning product, "Spic and Span", before it was applied to mixed-heritage couples. This product is still sold under the same name.
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Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)