Spiv

With alarm, the Daily Mail's Correspondent G. Ward Price reported that the horrid word "spiv" was "on every lip." He thought that it had something to do with people observed carrying large sums of cash, presumably to dodge taxes. A gentleman sardonically signing himself Sam Johnson asked in the Daily Telegraph: "Is 'spiv' . . . an abbreviation; if so, of what? Is it an importation; if so, from whence? Or is it perchance compounded from initials--'Social Parasites in Vehicles' . . . or the 'Society for the Promotion of Illegal Ventures'?"

Another Telegraph correspondent suggested that it was merely VIPS (the wartime phrase for Very Important Persons) spelled backwards. "With demobilization, the term came into civvy street [and] received its demob suit with all its original connotation--that of a person having a good time at the expense of others." Gossip Writer Charles Graves claimed: "My deep research into the source of the word shows that it was originally used colloquially by race-gangs [for] a shady character who lives by his wits, but without the physical or mental courage to show violence or turn burglar." A bookish reporter for the Daily Mail delved into a forgotten volume called The Autobiography of a Spiv, published in 1937. The word Spiv, he claimed after thorough study, had a 19th Century origin, connoting well-dressed or dandified.

Whatever its origin, whatever its meaning, the word "spiv" had definitely become a part of the King's English. Last week the Right Honorable Ralph Assheton, M.P., escorted it formally into Hansard's (the British Congressional Record) and immortality. Britain, he said on the floor of Parliament, was sinking into a socialist swamp of "spiv-economy."

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