Antedating of spiggoty/spigotty (1900)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yes, Mark. "Spic" had an alternate, now obsolete, spelling as "spig."  Both were common in the armed services.

JL



"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
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Poster: "Mark A. Mandel"
Subject: Re: Antedating of spiggoty/spigotty (1900)
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"Douglas G. Wilson" notes:
>>>>>

I presume that the original expression was "speak the [English]" pronounced
by a Spanish-speaker /spik[a]di/ or so. Of course this can be rendered as a
pseudo-English word ostensibly related to "spigot". It can also be rendered
other ways. Here is "Spickety" (cf. "spickety-span"):

----------

(from N'archive)

_Daily Iowa State Press_, 24 Aug. 1899: p. 7(?):

[supposedly from the _Atlanta Constitution_: "Lieutenant Bobbie: A True
Story of a Thrilling Incident of the Campaign in Porto Rico", by Milt Saul]


[...]
<<<<<

1. And this is presumably the origin of "spic" for 'Puerto Rican'.

2. But I always took "No spikka [di] English" as an Italian caricature, not
a Spanish one. ISTM that epenthetic final vowels are a marker of
stage/caricature Italian accents, and prothetic initial ones of Spanish
ones; "spikka" goes with Italian at both ends. (Initial [sp-] is perfectly
acceptable in Italian, but in Spanish it becomes [Esp-].) Can we resolve the
apparent contradiction?

-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian,
Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody
a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]

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