I’ve heard spic comes from spiggoty; don’t ask me what spiggoty means because I have no idea.
Ever read Winnie the Pooh?
That Tigger guy - RACIST!
Here’s some thoughts on the origin of SPIC
Doubtless samclem will come along shortly with his big swinging dictionary to tell us we’re all entomological 'tards.
Huh, I’ve never heard this word before. Webster doesn’t have it online, nor in book form. Strange. However a search of the web did show that this word is more or less unanymously agreed as the origin of the word “spic”. At least this guy says so http://www.mackido.com/Politics/WhatsInAName.html
Stranger things have happened. How do you get “Peggy” from “Margaret”?
Isn’t that what lesbian seperationists are for?
[slight hijack]
I had no idea what “spic” really meant until my husband explained it to me one evening. I had always thought that it * was * referring to “spic and span,” and that it was an insulting term for someone who was compulsively clean. I felt like an idiot. [/slight hijack]
The Bee Gee’s had a song called “Spicks and Specks”…I’m sure they were unaware of the possible connotations.
I think we can be 100% certain “Hispanic” and “Spic” are completely unrelated. “Hispanic” was introduced as a popular term in the 1970’s by the federal government to refer to Spanish speakers or “Latinos” in official documents or the census. Until then there was no single term that really seemed to work. Before then, “Hispanic” was definitely in the dictionary - but it had a semantic meaning similar to “Gallic” or “Teutonic” - but it wasn’t an everyday word people would use to describe people (especially from Latin America). “Spic” seems to date from at least the 1940’s if not well before.
That’s hilarious. I never would have put the two together. And I never noticed that “spick & span,” the expression or the product, contained the word “spic.”
It’s kind of ironic, because the town I grew up in had a large Latin population, and virtually every cleaning lady was Latina. At the time, we used the term “Hispanics,” and unfortunately, the term “spic” was sometimes used. It was not seen as being extremely derogatory, however. Just mildly derogatory, and more descriptive than outwardly racist. But this was among the “white” population, and I’m sure the people in question probably felt differently. (I didn’t use the term myself, of course, so please don’t yell at me.)
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that as a kid, I came to associate cleanliness with the “spics.” If you wanted to you house to be spick & span, you hired a Hispanic.
And I had always assumed that “spic” came from “hispanic.” It seemed straightforward to me: Hispanic. Glad to know that there’s a lot more to the story. Thanks for the links.
Nicknames like this gfollow a two step process
-
Abbreviate the nane to one syllable.
-
Change the first letter.
Thus we have:
Richard -> Rick -> Dick
Edward -> Ed -> Ned/Ted
William -> Will -> Bill
Margaret ->Meg -> Peg
etc.
While this is the same scenerio as the town I grew up in as a child, there was never any implied or otherwise connection between the term “spick & span” nor the cleaning product Spic & Span amongst the townspeople in my little rural part of America. However, there were plenty of racists there that referred to any Latin American as a “spic,” as is the case in virtually every part of America. Being as that this derogatory term had been in use for some time, it seemed perfectly rational that a company from the turn of the twentieth century might not have an aversion to using a racist term or two in their naming of a product. I had speculated that the “Span” in their product name might be referring to Spaniards, and that there may, as you mentioned, be a connection being made between cleaning and Latinos. For whatever reason, it seems to be a common racist notion that Latinos, and Mexicans in particular, are better at cleaning, harvesting, dishwashing and other sundry of lousy jobs than anyone else, without the slightest thought occurring to such jerks that think that way that maybe it’s just because Mexican immigrants don’t really come here as welcome immigrants to America, and hence their experience from back home is of little relevance to established Americans. While this is true to all non-white immigrants and even some white immigrants, I have the belief that Mexicans, being a race with a lot of dicey history with American settlers, are treated to more nasty forms of segregation than many others now and then. At any rate, the notion that Mexicans are better at cleaning is total bull, but lots of folks seem to think quite the opposite. Mexicans may be hard workers in general, but think about the adversity they’re up against… I think anybody would do just about anything to get out of terrifying poverty and a corrupted governing system given the chance, and they happen to be just across our border, so it makes it easier since planes and boats aren’t part of the picture (with the exception of la migra and all).
This had been my assumption as well, I had never heard the word “spiggoty” before. In fact, neither had my girlfriend and she’s a Mexican American. She actually doubted very much so that Spic & Span came from some racist history, much more than I did, but neither of us knew, so I thought it best to ask Cecil and gang. Thanks for the interesting history lesson all!
Ugh. What that first sentence I wrote should’ve clarified was that there was no connection amongst my townsfolk as a child between the racist word “spic” and the cleaning product or the concurrent term. But there was also no connection between the orignal term and its meaning, “spick & span”, to my knowledge either. I’d never heard of the Dutch use referring to boats till just a few days ago, in fact. How actually did it come to be that a boat term crossed over to mean “clean”, especially having come from meaning “new”? Come to think of it, how did it come to mean “new”, either?
I’m really surprised that people don’t know what “spic and span” means.
My mother used to say things like, “I want those dishes to be spic and span, got that?”
Well, there’s this guy, Cecil Adams, that answers these sort of questions. You might want to check him out. 