spic / spiggoty

27 December 2021

Spic is a derogatory and offensive name for a Latin American or Hispanic person. The term arose out of the US acquisition and occupation of Puerto Rico following the 1898 Spanish-American War. It is probably a clipping of an older, now largely obsolete term, spiggoty, which was applied to immigrants from Central and South America because they did not spikka da English.

Spiggoty, in the form spickety, appears in a syndicated newspaper article in the Daily Iowa State Press of 24 August 1899 about an American army officer in Puerto Rico who heroically organized a fire-fighting brigade to extinguish a fire in his artillery battery’s magazine, a fire that threatened not only his camp, but also the nearby town. The next day, the townspeople delivered gifts of flowers to the lieutenant:

“Do you think,” said Sentry Laird to the alcade after the floral offering had been made and accepted—“do you think for a minnit that Leftenant Bobbie done the Hobson act for the likes of you? ’Twas for the Battery M of Seventh that worruk was did last night, I can tell you those, and you’re not the first Spickety that has been here to day to lave a bookkay for him doin’ it.”

The form spiggoty and an explanation for the term’s origin appears in the New York Times of 20 May 1900:

The American designation of the native is Spiggoty, accented on the first syllable. Its origin is indefinite, but it may have come from the native ambition to speak English and to inform all comers of that desire. The native tongue, accustomed to soft letters, struggles hard with the k in “speak,” and makes it sound like g cut off short. English is Ingles. When “speak English” encounters a Porto Ricon, the result may be not unlike “spiggely,” which some Anglo-Saxon mind roughened into “spiggoty.” Whatever the origin, one hears everywhere of spiggoty people, spiggoty money, and all else spiggoty. Everybody uses the term, the natives having almost accepted it as a proper designation. If into some official document sent to Washington it should slip, the public may know that it has come to stay, and that a fresh coin has enriched the language.

Despite what the Times said, it’s hard to believe that Puerto Ricans accepted the term graciously. When you’re under military occupation, you pretend to like what the occupiers call you. That Puerto Ricans disliked the name is made clear in the following piece, which also is the earliest attestation of the abbreviated form spig. From an article in The World’s Work of January 1906:

Porto Ricans writhe under the contemptuous name of “Spigs,” but there is little wonder that this piece of American slang has become a fixture.

The spik form is in place by 1933, when it appears in Ernest Hemingway’s short story The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio:

Outside in the corridor the detective sergeant stood with the interpreter beside Mr. Frazer's wheeled chair.

"I suppose you think somebody shot him in the back too?"

"Yes," Frazer said. "Somebody shot him in the back. What's it to you?"

"Don't get sore," the sergeant said. "I wish I could talk spik."

"Why don't you learn?"

"You don't have to get sore. I don't get any fun out of asking that spik questions. If I could talk spik it would be different."

"You don't need to talk Spanish," the interpreter said. "I am a very reliable interpreter."

"Oh, for Chrisake," the sergeant said. "Well, so long. I'll come up and see you."

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Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. spic, n., sippoty, n.

Hemingway, Ernest. “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio.” Winner Take Nothing. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933. Project Gutenberg Canada.

“Light-Hearted Porto Rico.” New York Times, 20 May 1900, 12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Lyle, Eugene P. “Our Experience in Porto Rico.” The World’s Work, 11.3, January 1906, 7082. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2021, s.v. spic, n. and adj., spiggoty, n. and adj.

Saul, Milt. “Lieutenant Bobbie. A True Story of a Thrilling Incident of the Campaign in Porto Rico” (syndicated). Daily Iowa State Press (Iowa City), 24 August 1899, 7. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

frankincense

Flowers and leaves of Boswellia sacra, a tree that produces frankincense, on the campus of Florida International University in Miami. Branches of a tree with green leaves and orange and yellow blooms.

20 December 2021

[26 December 2021, updated with correction to the etymology of the Greek from Languagehat.com.]

Frankincense is the aromatic resin of the trees of the genus Boswellia that is burned as incense. Frankincense is perhaps best known as one of the gifts the Magi bring to the infant Jesus. The Vulgate Matthew 2:11 reads:

et intrantes domum invenerunt puerum cum Maria matre ejus et procidentes adoraverunt eum et apertis thesauris suis obtulerunt ei munera aurum tus et murram. (Vulgate)

(On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh—New Revised Standard Version.)

The Latin tus or thus can refer to incense generally and the resin of the genus Boswellia in particular. The Koine Greek original is λίβανος (libanos, frankincense). The Greek, in turn, is probably a borrowing from a Semitic language—the Arabic word for it is luban, and the Proto-Semitic root is *lbn, meaning white, a reference to the milky appearance of the resin as it flows from the tree.

The English word is borrowed from the Anglo-Norman phrase franc encens. The basic meaning of franc is free, but it can also mean noble or distinguished. In other words, the term means high-quality incense. The Anglo-Latin francum incensum makes an appearance in 1206, although the more usual Latin nomenclature was liberum incensum. However, there is a slight problem with this etymology in that while the Latin liber means free, it was not generally used to mean noble or distinguished. Additionally, the noble/distinguished sense of franc in Anglo-Norman and Continental Old French was, as a rule, only applied to the social status of people. Francencens is the only example in Old French where franc is applied to a plant.

That issue does not rule the standard etymology out, but it does suggest an alternative. It may be that the Latin liberum incensum is a re-analysis of the Greek libanos, turning the Greek word into a more familiar adjective in Latin. The franc would then be a straightforward translation of the Latin, with a subsequent semantic shift to mean noble/high quality, as that would make more sense in the context of incense

Frankincense, or variations thereof, appear in Latin, French, and English in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The date corresponds to the rise of the cult of the Magi and the growing importance of the Magi in Christian worship and iconography. For instance, the Shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne, a reliquary said to contain the bones of the three Magi, was built in the thirteenth century.

The Anglo-Norman francencens may have appeared as early as 1216 in a copy of a trade record from early in the reign of Henry III. It appears in a list of customs duties for products arriving in the city of London. The problem is that this is in a fifteenth-century manuscript (the Liber Albus) that purports to reproduce a thirteenth century document. Whether the word appeared in the original or whether it is an interpolation by a later scribe is unknown.

John Gower uses the phrase franc encens in his Mirour de l’Omme, written c. 1370:

En genullant luy font offrens,
C’est orr et mirre et franc encens,
En demoustrance par figure
Qu’il estoit Rois sure toutes gens,
Et verray dieus omnipotens,
Et mortiel homme en sa nature.

(Kneeling, they make offerings to him of gold and myrrh and frankincense, demonstrating that he was king of all peoples, and truly both omnipotent God and mortal man in his nature.)

Frankincense appears in English use in the closing years of the fourteenth century. One early and instructive appearance is in John Trevisa’s 1398 translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things):

Sabea is a cuntrey in Arabia and [haþ] þe name of Saba þe sone of Chus. Þis cuntrey streccheþ in streyȝt lengþe estwarde toward þe see Persicum, and is nyȝe to Caldea in þe norþe, and endeth at þe [see] of Arabia in the weste, and is nyȝe to Ethiopia in þe southe. And þis londe bereþ [thus] frannkincense and ȝeueþ goode smelles, for in wodes and lanndes þerof groweth myrre, canel, thus, and oþer swete spicerie.

(Saba is a country in Arabia and has the name of Saba, the son of Chus. This country stretches in a straight line eastward toward the Persian Sea, and is near to Chaldea in the north, and ends at the Arabian Sea in the west, and is near to Ethiopia in the south. And this land bears frankincense and gives good odors, for in the woods and lands thereof grow myrrh, cinnamon, incense, and other sweet spices.)

All the extant manuscripts of Trevisa are copies (or copies of copies) of an original. The published edition of Trevisa’s work that I take this quotation from uses London, British Library, MS Additional 27944 as the base manuscript. The words in square brackets appear in other manuscripts and are thought to be in Trevisa’s original. Bartholomæus Anglicus’s Latin reads est autem regio thurifera (and this is an incense-producing region). Trevisa’s original seems to have included both thus and frankincense, indicating that he thought frankincense would be unfamiliar to many readers. The fact that later copies omit the Latin word indicates that within a few years the word frankincense had become familiar.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2008. s.v. francencens, franc.

Bibla Sacra Iuxta Vulgatem Versionem, fifth edition. Robert Weber and Roger Gryson, eds. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Matthew 2:11, 1528.

Comment on “Frankincense.” Languagehat.com, 22 December 2021.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. incensum, sacristarius. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Gower John. Mirour de l’Omme. The Complete Works of John Gower, vol. 1 of 4. G.C. Macauley, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899, lines 28,165–170, 313.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. frank-encens, n.

Müller, Walter W. “Notes on the Use of Frankincense in South Arabia.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, vol. 6, 1976, 124–36. JSTOR.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NSRV), augmented third edition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007, Matthew 2.11, 10 New Testament.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. frankincense, n., frank, adj.2.

Riley, Henry Thomas, ed. Liber Albus, Liber Customarum, et Liber Horn, vol. 1. London: Longman, et al., 1859, 230. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Trevisa, John. On the Properties of Things, vol. 2 of 3. M.C. Seymour and D.C. Greetham, eds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. 15.131, 802. London, British Library, MS Additional 27944.

Image credit: Scott Zona, 2008. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Jack Frost

c.1850 cover of sheet music for Arthur Henry Brown’s Little Jack Frost Quadrilles. Image of a red-hooded, young, fairy-like man with wings skating on a pond. A wreath of holly is around his waist. The picture is partially framed with more holly.

21 December 2021

Jack Frost is a personification of cold weather or of winter more generally. The etymology is quite straightforward, the personal name Jack + frost. The name Jack, a familiar form of John, has been used as a name for a generic or hypothetical man since the fourteenth century. In addition to Jack Frost, we see it in such terms as Jack Tar for a sailor and Jack Robinson, and in jack-in-the-box and jack-o-lantern.

Jack Frost, in particular, dates to the early eighteenth century. We see it in a short book describing various Christmas-time amusements, titled Round About Our Coal-Fire, that was probably published in 1730:

This time of Year being Cold and Frosty generally speaking, or when Jack-Frost commonly takes us by the Nose, the Diversions are within Doors, either in Exercise or by the Fire-Side.

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Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2018, s.v. Jack Frost, n.; modified September 2021, s.v. Jack, n.2.

Round About Our Coal-Fire: or, Christmas Entertainments. London: J. Roberts, 1730[?], 8. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: Unknown artist, c.1850. British Museum.

spick and span

Advertisement for the cleaning product Spic and Span that appeared in the Ladies’s Home Journal in 1948. Colored drawings of a blond woman holding a box of the product and cleaning a door and wall, with wording that touts the utility of the cleanser.

20 December 2021

First, the phrase spick and span is an adjectival phrase meaning perfectly or brand new or a reference to refurbishing or cleaning that restores something to mint condition. It is not etymologically related to the ethnic slur (cf. spic). To the present-day ear, the phrase is idiomatic, seeming to make no literal sense. But the elements spick and span go back centuries, surviving, aside from use in some dialects, only in this phrase.

The adjective span-new appears in English in the late thirteenth century. It is from the Old Norse spán-nýr, literally shaving-new, that is like something newly carved. We see it in the romance Havelok the Dane, which dates to that period. In a plot found in many romances, young Havelok is the long-lost heir to the Danish throne, poverty-stricken and working in a kitchen:

For he ne havede nouth to shride
But a kovel ful unride,
That was ful and swithe wicke;
Was it nouth worth a fir-sticke.
The cok bigan of him to rewe
And bouthe him clothes al spannewe:
He bouthe him bothe hosen and shon,
And sone dide him dones on.

(For he had nothing to wear but a crude cloak that was foul and very wretched; it was not worth a stick of firewood. The cook began to take pity on him and bought him clothes, all span-new; he bought him both hose and shoes, and made him put them on at once.)

The spick is added in the sixteenth century; it appears to be a reduplicative emphasis using elements borrowed from Dutch and Flemish spik, literally a spike or splinter/shaving. We see spick and spanne newe in a 1579 translation of Plutarch’s Lives, in a passage describing the Macedonian army that is about to be defeated by the Romans:

The third squadron was of MACEDONIANS, and all of them chosen men, aswell for the flower of their youthe, as for the valliantnes of their persones: and they were all in goodly gilt armours, and braue purple cassocks apon them, spicke, and spanne newe.

And the modern form of the phrase is in place in the early seventeenth century, when it appears in Ben Jonson’s play The Magnetick Lady, which was first acted in October 1632:

There's nothing vexes me, but that he has staind
My new white sattin Doublet; and bespatter’d
My spick and span silke Stockings, o’the day
They were drawne on: And here's a spot i’ my hose too.

So, spick and span is something of a linguistic fossil. The individual elements are both archaic, but the idiom remains current.

The product Spic and Span was trademarked in the United States in 1926.

There is a persistent etymythology that associates with spick and span with ships, but there is no evidence for an origin in maritime jargon.

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Sources:

Herzman, Ronald B., Graham Duke, and Eve Salisbury, eds. Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, Athelston. Robbins Library Digital Projects: TEAMS Middle English Texts. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997, lines 964–71. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Laud Misc. 108

Jonson, Ben. “The Magnetick Lady.” In The Works of Benjamin Jonson, vol. 2. London: Richard Meighen, 1640, 3.2, 33. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. span-neue, adj.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. spick and span, adj,, n., and adv., spick
and span new, adj., span-new, adj.

Plutarch. “The Life of Paulus Æmilius.” The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes. Thomas North, translator. London: Thomas Vautroullier and John Wight, 1579, 273. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: Procter and Gamble, 1948. Public domain in the United States as an image published between 1926 and 1963 and the copyright was not renewed.

myrrh

Somali man collecting myrrh from a tree. A man cutting into a tree and catching the flowing resin in a basket.

17 December 2021

Myrrh is an aromatic gum resin from trees of the genus Commiphora. It is perhaps best known today as one of the gifts brought to the infant Jesus by the magi (Matthew 2:11; cf. frankincense). In the ancient world, myrrh was used for a variety of medical and ritual purposes, including use in burial.

The word comes from the Latin murra, reinforced in the twelfth century by the Anglo-Norman mirre. The Latin comes from the Greek μύρρα, which is ultimately a borrowing of Semitic origin. There are cognates in a number of Semitic languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac, but which one or ones Greek borrowed from are uncertain. The Semitic root means bitter.

The word appears in English in the early medieval period. One early instance is in the Vespasian Psalter, an eighth-century Latin text with a ninth-century, interlinear, Old English gloss. The instance in question is from Psalm 45:8:

myrre & dropa & smiring from hreglum ðinum from stepum elpanbaennum of ðæm dec gelustfulladun

Mirra et gutta et cassia a vestimentis tuis a gradibus eburneis ex quibus te delectaverunt

(All your robes are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia from palaces adorned with ivory.)

No discussion of the origin of myrrh would be complete without the account from Book 10 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In that myth, Myrrha was the daughter of King Cinyras. The young woman fell in love with her father, but knowing incest was wrong and that her love could never be consummated, tried to kill herself. The suicide was prevented by her old nurse, who was horrified at the reason for Myrrha’s despair, but to save her life agreed to help her bed her father. Then, during the annual rites of Ceres, when wives were not supposed to sleep with their husbands, the nurse told the king that there was a beautiful, young woman who loved him. He asked the nurse to bring her to his bedchamber, which the nurse did. Father and daughter slept together for several nights, then one night, desiring to know his lover’s identity, the king lit a torch. Horrified upon seeing his daughter, Cinyras tried to kill Myrrha, but she fled. Pregnant, crying, and wandering in the wilderness, she prayed to the gods for deliverance, and they turned her into a tree, her tears becoming the aromatic resin. But the child continued to gestate, and at the appointed time the tree cracked open and the baby Adonis was born, the most beautiful man who ever lived, so beautiful that Venus, herself, fell in love with him.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2012, s.v. mirre, n.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. David Raeburn, translator. London: Penguin, 2004, Book 10, 397–410.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2003, modified September 2021, s.v. myrrh, n.1.

Sweet, Henry, ed. The Oldest English Texts. Early English Text Society 83. London: N. Trübner, 1885, 249. Internet Archive. London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian A.l.

Image credit: Unknown photographer, 1970s, Somalia Ministry of Information and National Guidance. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.