Spic is an ethnic slur used in the United States for a person of Hispanic background.
Some in the United States believe the word is a play on their pronunciation of the English "speak."[1][2][3] It may also derive from "spig", which was originally used to refer to Italians, in turn from "spiggoty" (sometimes spelled "spiggity", "spigotti", or "spigoty") which may derive from "spaghetti" or "no spika de Inglese".[4] 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), favored the explanation that it derives from "no spik Ingles" (or "no spika de Ingles").[5] 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).
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.[6] 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.[7] The product took the name from a common phrase meaning extremely clean, "spick and span", which was a British idiom first recorded in 1579, and used in Samuel Pepys's diary. A spick was a spike or nail, a span was a very fresh wood chip, and thus the phrase meant clean and neat and all in place, as in being nailed down. The "span" in the idiom also is part of "brand span new", now more commonly rendered "brand spanking new", and has nothing to do with the words "Spanish" or "Hispanic". [4][5]
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