Spic
Spic is an ethnic slur used in the United States for a person of Hispanic background.
Etymology
Some in the United States believe that the word is a play on their pronunciation of the English "speak."[1][2][3] The Oxford English Dictionary takes spic to be a contraction of the earlier form spiggoty.[4] The oldest known use of "spiggoty" is in 1910 by Wilbur Lawton in Boy Aviators in Nicaragua, or, In League with the Insurgents. 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).
References
- ↑ Interactive Dictionary of Racial Language Accessed April 12, 2007
- ↑ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Accessed April 12, 2007
- ↑ [Santiago, Esmeralda. When I Was Puerto Rican. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.]
- ↑ "spiggoty". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005. citing as an etymology Amer. Speech XIII. 311/1 (1938) ‘Spiggoty’ originated in Panama during Construction Days, and is assumed to be a corruption of ‘spikee de’ in the sentence ‘No spikee de English’, which was then the most common response of Panamanians to any question in English.
- ↑ Take Our Word for It June 21, 1999, Issue 45 of etymology webzine. Accessed January 16, 2007.
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