statusy and stagy and spiny and spiky

So many rich words jumped off these pages of the Collegiate that I fear I can only begin to get started here. In addition to some of them, I think I will also take a brief digression on four words ending in "y" ("spiky," "spiny," "stagy," and "statusy"). And, there are other little distractions, such as my feeble attempt at humor here: 'The rest of the one-celled creatures kept a watch on their friend to make sure he wasn't sporicidal" ["sporicidal actually is a good word, but means "tending to kill off spores" rather than in the way I just used it]. Well, let's get to it.

Spiccato

Spiccato is staccato for violins. Derived from the Italian spiccare, meaning "to detach" or "to make distinct," spiccato is a "detached playing of the violin with short breaks between notes caused by controlled bouncing of the bow." Directions to play spiccato are communicated by dots over the notes. From 1938 we have: "The scherzo, which incidentally allowed Mr. Campoli to unfold long stretches of the most prodigious spiccato bowing." A contemporary commentator on Mozart's most beloved violin concerto, in G, says that in the third movement (the rondo allegro), there is at first "a 'romantic feeling in minor, then it gives an elated violin spiccato in major" (The word staccare, a shortened form of destaccare, also means to "detach" and so a staccato break is the same as a spiccato pause). Italian words in English can be quite difficult to spell because you never really know which consonant is doubled and which remains single. For example, I tripped up last year on the word "cappelletti," because I think I dropped one of the double consonants. Here, however, there is only one double consonant.

Spile

While spiccato only came into English two centuries ago, spile goes back to the early 16th century and seems to mean two contradictory things. On the one hand it is "a small plug of wood for stopping the vent of a cask; a spigot." Another word for this is a bung. Thus, a spile is simply a peg that stops the flow of something. Then, on the other hand, a spile is a peg that is hammered into a maple tree to enable and direct the flow of the sap or sugar-water to a pan or bucket placed beneath it. Thus it seems to be something that both stops up a hole and opens up a hole. But perhaps its basic significance is just the former; even when it is hammered into a maple tree, permitting the sap to flow, it directs it or stops it from flowing elsewhere. I think we probably get the word "splinter" from this word--a sort of wedge of wood that can stop up a hole.

Spillikin

The Collegiate defines this word with one word: "JACKSTRAW." A jackstraw, for those of you who don't spend most of your time playing games, is, appropriately enough, "one of the pieces used in a game jackstraws." We all played this game as kids, I think, though under a different name. For me it was "pick up sticks." Jackstraw is described this way by the OED: "one of a set of straws, or strips of ivory, bone, wood or the like, used in a game in which they are thrown on the table in a heap, and have to be picked up singly without disturbing the rest of the heap." The word in this sense, however, only goes back to 1801. Prior to that date the word jackstraw meant "a man of no substance, worth, or consideration." John Milton could write: "Thou..an inconsiderable fellow and a jack-straw, and who dependest on the good-will of thy masters for a poor stipend." Thus, in an interesting sort of way, the "humanistic" meaning of the term antedated the "game" or "technical" meaning of the word. But the word spillikin also is useful to describe a natural or "still life" scene. From 1890: "Dead bamboos lay like spellicans cast about in every direction." Or, from a quotation appearing in the Century: "The kitchen fire-irons were in exactly the same position against the back door as when Martha and I had skillfully piled them up like spillikins, ready to fall with an awful clatter if only a cat had touched the outside panels." One might well say that after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in May 1980 the large firs were splayed around like spillikins over the pulverized and muddy earth.

A Digression to Conclude

The word spilth is easy to spell, even if it takes a little work to pronounce, but I want to give it here. Spilth is either "the act or an instance of spilling" or "something spilled: REFUSE, RUBBISH." The first attestation of spilth is in Shakespeare. From Timon of Athens: "Our Vaults have wept/ With drunken spilth of Wine." Spilth seems to be a portmanteau word, made up of "filth" and "spill." When the stuff is spilled, it becomes filth and therefore is "spilth." I suppose I had portmanteau words on my brain when I was writing the definition in my notes, for I inadvertently combined REFUSE and RUBBISH and wrote: "Spilth=Ruffish." With mistakes like these you see how our language is just in its infancy!

I will close, however, with reference to the four "y" words that I ran across in these pages: "spiky, spiny, stagy, statusy." I love the first, not because it is a new word (anyone who has seen teens in the past decade know that spiky hair is de rigueur for many), but because of all the synonyms there are for it. Something spiky is "spicate, spicated, spiciferous, spicateous or calcarate." What joy attends those who really want to investigate.

Something spiny is something thin, slim, or slender. One can have "cold, spiny grasshoppers." But, the word was first used in a figurative sense, to mean something thorny, difficult or troublesome, such as "the spiny deserts of scholastic philosophy." I believe that almost every appearance of the word these days will be in a scientific or natural historical sense, but my preference is for the humanistic usage.

The word stagy, when relating to a person, means "given to the use or affectation of theatrical mannerisms in everyday affairs." From 1864: "The Italian doctor was a man with a love of effect, one of those stagey beings whom we meet..more often on the Continent." Today we talk about people as "theatrical" or "loving to show off." I think a rehabilitation of stagy is in order.

Finally, we have statusy, a word only invented in 1962 to mean "possessing, indicating or imparting a high status." I think that with all the status-conscious people in our society today that we would see an explosion of instances where this term might be useful. "All those statusy suburbs of the country, where everyone lives on a 'terrace' rather than a road, where every development is double-name, where signs of status multiply like the anxiety that produces them..." Want to live there?

1901