View source for Spic

{{short description|Ethnic slur against people from Spanish-speaking countries}}
{{italic title}}
{{About|the ethnic slur|the Cold War-era light tank|Spähpanzer SP I.C.|other uses}}
'''''Spic''''' (or '''spick''') is an [[List of ethnic slurs|ethnic slur]] used in the [[United States]] to describe [[Hispanic and Latino Americans]] or [[Hispanophone|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''.<ref name="SPIC">{{cite web |url=http://kpearson.faculty.tcnj.edu/Dictionary/spic.htm |title=SPIC |access-date=2008-11-07 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081012234617/http://kpearson.faculty.tcnj.edu/Dictionary/spic.htm |archive-date=2008-10-12 }} Interactive Dictionary of Language. Accessed April 12, 2007.</ref><ref name="bartleby">{{cite web |url=http://www.bartleby.com/61/53/S0635300.html |title=Spic. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |access-date=2007-04-13 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071118225946/http://www.bartleby.com/61/53/S0635300.html |archive-date=2007-11-18 }} [[The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language]]. Accessed April 12, 2007.</ref><ref name="SANTIAGO">Santiago, Esmeralda. When I Was Puerto Rican. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.</ref> The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' takes ''spic'' to be a contraction of the earlier form ''spiggoty''.<ref>{{OED|spiggoty}} citing as an etymology ''[[American Speech|Amer. Speech]] [https://www.jstor.org/stable/451348?seq=2 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.''</ref> 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").<ref name="TOW">[http://takeourword.com/Issue045.html Take Our Word for It] June 21, 1999, Issue 45 of etymology webzine.</ref>
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 [[Italians|Italian]] or "[[Italian-American|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.<ref>Wentworth, Harold, and Flexner, Stuart Berg. The Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960, pp. 507.</ref>
==See also==
* [[Anti-Hispanic sentiment in the United States]]
* [[Spic and Span]]
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
{{wiktionary-inline}}
{{Ethnic slurs}}
[[Category:Ethnic and religious slurs]]
[[Category:Hispanic and Latino American society]]
[[Category:Italian-American history]]
[[Category:Hispanophobia]]
[[Category:English profanity]]