Spic
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Spic, also spelled spik, spick, or spig, is an highly offensive ethnic slur used in the United States and United Kingdom for a person from Latin America or of Latino/Hispanic descent, sometimes including Spanish and Brazilian persons. It's usage is quite similar to that of the term nigga as it raises few objections when used by latinos but is considered off-limits to anyone else other than latinos. The first s is usually set in lowercase type, but is sometimes set uppercase. Spic can be used both as a noun and an adjective, and is even used at times as a name for the Spanish language. For example, Ernest Hemingway in Winner take Nothing (1934, page 200) wrote "I wish I could talk spik . . . I don't get any fun out of asking that spik questions."
The word has been dated to around 1916, when its first known written usage was by Earnest Peixotto in Our Hispanic Southwest, page 102. One of the first recorded usages of the word was in Ladies' Home Journal, on September 17, 1919, when it wrote "The Marines had been . . . silencing the elusive ‘spick’ bandit in Santo Domingo." Its history before that time, however, is a tad less certain. It may derive from spig, which was originally used to refer to Italians, in turn from spiggoty (sometimes spelled spiggity, spigotti, or spigoty) which is derived from spaghetti. The oldest known use of spiggoty is in 1910 by Wilbur Lawton in Boy Aviators in Nicaragua, or, in League with the Insurgents, page 331. Stuart Berg Flexner in I hear America Talking, (1976) suggested that it may actually derive from "no spik Ingles". Finally, a third theory is that the word spic is from the shortening of the word "Hispanic"-hiSPanIC. All three theories are in line with standard naming practices, which include attacking people according to the foods they eat (see Kraut) and for their failure to speak a language (see Barbarian). A slur derived from spic is "spic and span" (first used in the American Negro community in the 1950s) meaning a mixed Puerto Rican and Negro couple.
As mentioned above, Ladies' Home Journal, and Ernest Hemingway have used the word in the past. It was also used by William Faulkner in Knight's Gambit (1946), page 137, when he said "I don't intend that a fortune-hunting Spick shall marry my mother." It was later used by F. Scott Fitzgerald in Tender is the Night (1934), page 275, although in dialog: "‘He's a spic!’ he said. He was frantic with jealousy."
In Australia, the word "spic" is sometimes used in reference to a technically bright but socially inept person. It is synonymous with words such as "nerd" and "geek"
[edit] Works consulted
- Hugh Rawson, "spic(k)" Wicked Words, (1989) p. 19.
- John A. Simpson and Edmund S.C. Weiner, eds. "spic", The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989)
- Jonathon Green, "spic and span", The Cassell Dictionary of Slang, (1998) p. 390.
