The link between spick and span, spanking and spoon
I ‘hoovered’ on Saturday (as we say in Britain for vacuuming) while my husband was out ‘exercising’. I don’t know whether he attracts dust, like a piece of amber, or produces it, as if by spontaneous combustion in slow motion. Anyway, when he settled in his chair again, he ran his finger rather annoyingly over the table next to him and said encouragingly: ‘Spick and span.’ It’s a curious expression, since neither part seems to have any meaning on its own. The table wasn’t spick. Nor was it span. The earliest known use of the phrase is by Thomas North in 1571, in his translation of Plutarch’s life of Aemilius Paullus, called Macedonicus not because he came from there but because he beat the Macedonians in battle.
