A spiff, or spiv, is slang for an immediate bonus for a sale. Typically, spiffs are paid, either by a manufacturer or employer, directly to a salesperson for selling a ''specific'' product. It is sometimes given as SPIF or SPIFF, a

backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

, with invented words to fit the letters, but these are not the origin (see below).

Origin

An early reference to a spiff can be found in a

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-gro ...

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

of 1859; "The percentage allowed by

draper Draper was originally a term for a retailer or wholesaler of cloth that was mainly for clothing. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. History Drapers were an important trade guild during the medieval period ...

s to their young men when they effect sale of old fashioned or undesirable stock."Oxford English Dictionary (1989) 2nd edition An article in the ''

Pall Mall Gazette ''The Pall Mall Gazette'' was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood. In 1921, '' The Globe'' merged into ''The Pall Mall Gazette'', which itself was absorbed int ...

'' of 1890 on the practices in London shops uses the term:

a "spiff" system is usually adopted, spiffs being premiums placed on certain articles, ''not'' of the last fashion, indicated by a marvelous hieroglyphic put on the price ticket. These marks are well known by the assistant, and the almost invisible mystic sign explains why an article, wholly unsuitable, is foisted on the jaded customer as "just the thing."''Pall Mall Gazette'' (London, England), Wednesday, April 2, 1890, ''The Ladies Corner: Round the Clock with a London Draper''

The

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...

suggests that (apart from a corruption of ''specific'') it could be connected with the use of the word in that period to mean a

dandy A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance. A dandy could be a self-made man who strove to imitate an aristocratic lifestyle desp ...

or somebody smartly dressed (hence spiffy, and to spiff up - to improve the appearance of a place or a person), but nobody seems to have been able to disentangle the threads of which came first, or what influenced what, or where the word originally came from.Daily Mirror, 11 Jan 1963, p 16 "Where the spivs began"

Practice

In 1936 Rex Stout used the word in Nero Wolfe's "The Red Box" (Chapter 3): "He stopped, smiling from Wolfe to me and back again like a haberdasher's clerk trying to sell an old number with a big spiff on it." In 1947 it was reported that spiffs were prizes given to employees who sold particularly high amounts of electrical goods.TIME magazine
Nov 17, 1947 "Retail Sales: Spiff Spiked" In 2019, Dell EMC use the term SPIF (Sales Performance Incentive Fund) to refer to programs designed to target business that might otherwise go to competitors.

Origin

Practice

References

Further reading