Spic (other)

''Spic'' (or spick) is an ethnic slur used in the United States to describe Hispanic and Latino Americans or Spanish-speaking people from Latin America.

Etymology and history

Some sources from the United States believe that the word ''spic'' is a play on a Spanish-accented pronunciation of the English word ''speak''. Interactive Dictionary of 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. The '' Oxford English Dictionary'' takes ''spic'' to be a contraction of the earlier form ''spiggoty''. 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").Take Our Word for It
June 21, 1999, Issue 45 of etymology webzine.

However, in an earlier publication, the 1960 ''Dictionary of American Slang'', written by Dr. Harold Wentworth, with Flexner as second author, ''spic'' is first identified as a noun for an Italian or " American of Italian ancestry", along with the words spic'', ''spig'', and ''spiggoty'', and confirms that it is shortened from the word '' spaghetti''. The authors refer to the word's usage in James M. Cain's ''Mildred Pierce'', referring to a "wop or spig", and say that this term was never preferred over '' wop'', and has been rarely used since 1915. However, the etymology remains.Wentworth, Harold, and Flexner, Stuart Berg. The Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960, pp. 507.

See also

* Anti-Hispanic sentiment in the United States
* Spic and Span

References

External links

{{Ethnic slurs

Ethnic and religious slurs
Hispanic and Latino American society
Italian-American history
Hispanophobia
English profanity