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Definition of Spick-and-span
1. Adjective. Conspicuously new. "A spick-and-span novelty"
2. Adjective. Completely neat and clean. "Their spic red-visored caps"
Similar to: Clean
Derivative terms: Immaculateness, Spotlessness
Definition of Spick-and-span
1. Adjective. (idiomatic) Clean, spotless; original sense “like new”. ¹
¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Lexicographical Neighbors of Spick-and-span
Literary usage of Spick-and-span
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1850)
"spick-and-span-NEW. Quite new. Fortune th' audacious doth ... Then while the
honour thou hast gat Is spick and span »ICH-, piping hot, Strike her up bravely ..."
2. Notes and Queries by Martim de Albuquerque (1851)
"Spick and Span new. — My wife very much grudges my spending threepence a week
for the ... There is much curious illustration of the phrase Spick and Span in ..."
3. A Select Collection of Old Plays: In Twelve Volumes by Robert Dodsley, Isaac Reed, Octavius Gilchrist, John Payne Collier (1825)
"40, where we read of spick and span new money. A late friend of mine was willing
to deduce it from spinning, as if it were a phrase borrowed from the ..."
4. Mount Omi and Beyond: A Record of Travel on the Thibetan Border by Archibald John Little (1901)
"... Hundreds of Green and Blue Marble Basins—Spick and Span Shrines—The Shrine of
the Snow Mountains—Junction with the ..."
5. Epea Pteroenta, Or, The Diversions of Purley by John Horne Tooke, Richard Taylor (1840)
"It is true S. Johnson says of Spick and Span, that " he should not have expected
to find this word authorized by a polite writer." " Sj)an new," he says, ..."
6. Suffolk Words and Phrases: Or, An Attempt to Collect the Lingual Localisms by Edward Moor (1823)
"Spick and span is not peculiar to Suffolk, but it is common there ; so is ...
Under Spick and span new, Nares explains it " quite new ; an expression not ..."
7. A Glossary; Or, Collection of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions to by Robert Nares, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, Thomas Wright (1867)
"SPICK AND SPAN NEW. Quite new; an expression not entirely disused : sufficiently
explained above under SPAN. Howell, who inserts it among his ..."
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