Advertisement for the cleaning product Spic and Span that appeared in the Ladies’s Home Journal in 1948. Colored drawings of a blond woman holding a box of the product and cleaning a door and wall, with wording that touts the utility of the cleanser.
20 December 2021
First, the phrase spick and span is an adjectival phrase meaning perfectly or brand new or a reference to refurbishing or cleaning that restores something to mint condition. It is not etymologically related to the ethnic slur (cf. spic). To the present-day ear, the phrase is idiomatic, seeming to make no literal sense. But the elements spick and span go back centuries, surviving, aside from use in some dialects, only in this phrase.
The adjective span-new appears in English in the late thirteenth century. It is from the Old Norse spán-nýr, literally shaving-new, that is like something newly carved. We see it in the romance Havelok the Dane, which dates to that period. In a plot found in many romances, young Havelok is the long-lost heir to the Danish throne, poverty-stricken and working in a kitchen:
For he ne havede nouth to shride
But a kovel ful unride,
That was ful and swithe wicke;
Was it nouth worth a fir-sticke.
The cok bigan of him to rewe
And bouthe him clothes al spannewe:
He bouthe him bothe hosen and shon,
And sone dide him dones on.(For he had nothing to wear but a crude cloak that was foul and very wretched; it was not worth a stick of firewood. The cook began to take pity on him and bought him clothes, all span-new; he bought him both hose and shoes, and made him put them on at once.)
The spick is added in the sixteenth century; it appears to be a reduplicative emphasis using elements borrowed from Dutch and Flemish spik, literally a spike or splinter/shaving. We see spick and spanne newe in a 1579 translation of Plutarch’s Lives, in a passage describing the Macedonian army that is about to be defeated by the Romans:
The third squadron was of MACEDONIANS, and all of them chosen men, aswell for the flower of their youthe, as for the valliantnes of their persones: and they were all in goodly gilt armours, and braue purple cassocks apon them, spicke, and spanne newe.
And the modern form of the phrase is in place in the early seventeenth century, when it appears in Ben Jonson’s play The Magnetick Lady, which was first acted in October 1632:
There's nothing vexes me, but that he has staind
My new white sattin Doublet; and bespatter’d
My spick and span silke Stockings, o’the day
They were drawne on: And here's a spot i’ my hose too.
So, spick and span is something of a linguistic fossil. The individual elements are both archaic, but the idiom remains current.
The product Spic and Span was trademarked in the United States in 1926.
There is a persistent etymythology that associates with spick and span with ships, but there is no evidence for an origin in maritime jargon.
Sources:
Herzman, Ronald B., Graham Duke, and Eve Salisbury, eds. Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, Athelston. Robbins Library Digital Projects: TEAMS Middle English Texts. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997, lines 964–71. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Laud Misc. 108
Jonson, Ben. “The Magnetick Lady.” In The Works of Benjamin Jonson, vol. 2. London: Richard Meighen, 1640, 3.2, 33. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. span-neue, adj.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. spick and span, adj,, n., and adv., spick
and span new, adj., span-new, adj.
Plutarch. “The Life of Paulus Æmilius.” The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes. Thomas North, translator. London: Thomas Vautroullier and John Wight, 1579, 273. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Procter and Gamble, 1948. Public domain in the United States as an image published between 1926 and 1963 and the copyright was not renewed.