spilth, a spilling, pouring out. Used of wine, Timon, ii. 2. 169. A Scottish word; also in use in Suffolk (EDD.).
spinet, a spinny, a copse, thicket. B. Jonson, The Satyr, first stage-direction. L. spinetum, a thicket of thorns; from spina, thorn.
spinner, a spider. B. Jonson, Barth. Fair, i. 1 (Quarlous); Mids. Night’s D. ii. 2. 21; Romeo, i. 4. 59; ‘Spynner or spyder, herigne’, Palsgrave; ‘Araigne, a spider or spinner’, Cotgrave. In prov. use (EDD.). ME. spynner, ‘arania’ (Prompt.).
spintry, a male prostitute. B. Jonson, Sejanus, iv. 5 (Arruntius). L. spintria.
spiny, slender. Middleton, A Chaste Maid, iii. 2 (1 Puritan); A Mad World, iii. 2. 7. Cp. prov. words spindly, spindling, spindle, meaning slender, see EDD. (s.v. Spindle).
spire, to sprout, shoot forth. Spenser, F. Q. iii. 5. 52. In prov. use, see EDD. (s.v. Spire, vb.1 8). ME. spyryn, as corn or odyre lyk, ‘spico’; spyre of corne (Prompt. EETS. 429 and 463). OE. spīr (Leechdoms), cp. Dan. spire, a germ, sprout. See [spere].
spirget, a wooden peg on which to hang things; ‘There hung a Bowle of Beech upon a spirget by a ring’, Golding, Metam. viii. 653. ‘Spurget’ is in prov. use in the north country, E. Anglia, and Sussex for an iron hook, see EDD. (s.v. Sperket).
spirt, to shoot up (as a plant), to sprout. Hen. V, iii. 5. 8; Stanyhurst, tr. of Aeneid, i. 558. In prov. use in the Midlands and Dorset (EDD.). OE. sprytian, to sprout, germinate.
spital, spittle, a hospital. Formerly hospital; whence ’spital. Hen. V, ii. 1. 78; v. 1. 86; Puritan Widow, i. 1. 151; spittle, Sir Thos. More, i. 3. 81; ‘Ladrerie, a Spittle for lepers’, Cotgrave. Hence, spital-house, Timon, iv. 3. 39. ME. spytyl hows, ‘leprosorium’ (Prompt. EETS. 429).
spitchcock’d. A spitchcock’d eel, a broiled eel spread on a skewer, ‘Spitchcock’d like a salted eel’, Cotton, Burlesque (Poems, p. 222); Cartwright, The Ordinary, ii. 1, in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, xii. 239. Hence spitchcock, a spitchcocked eel, Northward Ho, i. 1 (Chamberlain). See Dict. (s.v. Spitch-cock).