spitter, ‘Among Hunters, a red Male Deer near two Years old, whose Horns begin to grow up sharp, and spit-wise; it is also call’d a Brocket or Pricket’, Phillips, Dict., ed. 1706; ‘Subulo, an hart havyng hornes without tynes, called (as I suppose) a spittare’, Elyot, 1559. Applied to a full-grown stag by Golding, Metam. x. 117; fol. 121 (1603). Cp. G. spiesser, a brocket, a buck of the second year (Grieb-Schröer).
spittle; see [spital].
splay, to display, Caxton, Hist. Troye, leaf 93. 13; ‘Hys banners splaide’, and ‘Our ensignes splayde’, Gascoigne (Nares). Cp. E. splay-foot, see Dict. (s.v. Splay).
splay, to castrate, Meas. for M. ii. 1. 249 (mod. edd. spay). In Shropshire heifers are splayed to make them barren (EDD.).
spleen. The organ of the body viewed as the seat of emotions and passions; impetuosity, eagerness, ‘The spleen of fiery dragons’, Richard III, v. 3. 350; malice, hatred, ‘I have no spleen against you’, Hen. VIII, ii. 4. 89; a fit of passion,’ A hair-brained Hotspur, governed by a spleen’, 1 Hen. IV, v. 2. 19; any sudden impulse or fit beyond the control of reason, esp. a fit of laughter, ‘Thy silly thought enforces my spleen’, L. L. L. iii. 77; a caprice, ‘A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways’, Ven. and Ad. 907. See Schmidt.
splent, a lath, Fitzherbert, Husbandry, § 122. 10; ‘Splent for an house, laite’, Palsgrave. An E. Anglian word, see EDD. (s.v. Splint, sb.1 2). ME. splente (Prompt. EETS. 429).
splent, ‘a kind of hard swelling, without Pain, that grows on the Bone of a Horse’s Leg’, Phillips, Dict., 1706; Greene, Looking Glasse, i (p. 120).
sploach, a ‘splotch’, a blot. Wycherley, Gent. Dancing-master, v. 1 (Don Diego). ‘Splotch’ is in common prov. use (EDD.).
spondil, one of the vertebrae of the spine; ‘The spondils of his back’, B. Jonson, Sad Sheph. ii. 2 (Tuck). Gk. (Ionic) σπόνδυλος, (Attic) σφόνδυλος, a vertebra.
spooks-make, interpreter; ‘Of Gods the spooks-make’ (= L. interpres Divum), Stanyhurst, tr. of Aeneid, iii. 373. Spooks-make = spokes-make. ‘Spoke’ is in prov. use for talk, conversation (EDD.); ‘make’ is still in prov. use, meaning a companion. See [make].