speck

speck¹ small spot, particle

Etymology

The word for the small spot is inherited from Middle English specke, also spekke and speckke,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English specca (“a small spot, mark, stain”).^{[5][2][3][6][7]} The Old English word is not found in the related languages, though the OED compares speckle.^[5][8][9] Etymonline calls it of unknown origin, probably related to Dutch speckel (“speck, speckle”) and Middle Dutch spekelen (“to sprinkle”);^[3][10][11] Klein and Holthausen add Dutch spikkel (“speck, spot”) and compare Lithuanian spuogas (“spot”).^[10][12] Weekley thought it probably the same word as the dialect speck, a patch on a shoe.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small spot or mark of a different colour from its surroundings: in Old English, in the Corpus Glossary.^[5] Old English glosses use it for Latin macula and nota, and a leechbook tells the reader to smear the spots of shingles with the salve.^[6] Barnhart dates the Old English word to before 800, and finds the Middle English speckke in Trevisa's translation of Bartholomew's De Proprietatibus Rerum, before 1398.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The sense of a tiny bit or particle of something developed in the early 15th century,^[3][4][5] and was used without a following of and figuratively from 1601.^[5] From 1552 it could also be a small plot of land.^[5] Writers from Cowley (1656) used it for things made tiny by distance or by comparison with their surroundings, a use common in the 19th century, and Thomson (1744) for a small, distant cloud.^[5] A speck could also mark decay or a flaw: in the slang of London costermongers recorded by Mayhew in 1851, specks were damaged fruit,^[5][14][15] and in West Yorkshire dialect a speck was a cataract in the eye.^[15] In the United States not a speck meant "not at all" (1843).^[5] Australians called Tasmania the Speck from 1910, after its small size on the map, a shortening of Fly-speck Isle.^[14][16][5] The verb, to mark with specks, is first recorded in 1580, from the noun or as a back-formation from specked;^[5][4][8] Etymonline finds it implied in spekked, spotted, in the late 14th century.^[3] It was later used of moving like specks (1821, in John Clare) and of removing specks from cloth (1895).^[5]

Timeline

• Old English – a small spot or mark.^[5][6]
• early 15th century – a tiny bit or particle.^[5][4][3]
• before 1552 – a small piece of land.^[5]
• 1580 – verb, to mark with specks.^[5][4]
• 1656 – a thing made tiny by distance.^[5]
• 1744 – a small, distant cloud.^[5]
• 1821 – verb, to move or fly like specks.^[5]
• 1825 – a spot showing decay or a defect.^[5]
• 1843 – not a speck, not at all (United States).^[5]
• 1851 – damaged fruit, in costermongers' slang.^[5][14]
• 1895 – verb, to remove specks from a woven fabric.^[5]
• 1910 – the Speck, Tasmania.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A very small spot or mark, especially one of a different colour from its surface; a tiny stain: There was a speck of paint on her sleeve.^[11][17][5]
2. A small spot that shows decay, as in fruit; broadly, a flaw or blemish.^[17][5]
3. A tiny bit of something; a small particle: a speck of dust.^[11][17][5]
4. Something that looks tiny because it is far away.^[5]
5. the Speck (Australia, informal): Tasmania.^[14][16][5]

Verb

1. To mark with specks or spots: Rain had specked the windscreen.^[11][17][5]
2. To remove specks from cloth.^[17][5]
3. (Australia) To search the surface of the ground for particles of gold or opal.^[5][16][17]

Word family

• specked
• speckless
• specklessly
• specklessness
• flyspeck

speck² fat meat, blubber

Etymology

The word for fat meat is partly borrowed from Dutch spek, earlier speck, from Middle Dutch spec, and partly borrowed from German Speck, from Middle High German spec and Old High German spec;^[5][17] Middle Low German speck was the source of Swedish späck and Danish spæk.^[5] The word is related to Old English spic (“bacon, lard”), the source of spick, and to Old Norse spik (“fat of seals and whales, blubber”).^{[5][17][6][12]} The Shorter Oxford notes that Old English also had spec once, as a variant of spic, and that the word was reintroduced in the 17th century from Dutch or German.^[8] Etymonline instead derives it from spik (“animal fat, lard”) and Old English spic, perhaps partly from Old Norse, and thinks the later American word may be a borrowing from German.^[3] Its further origin is uncertain.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Fat meat, especially bacon or pork: 1633, in Thomas Heywood's The English Traveller.^[5] Etymonline dates it to the 1630s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

From 1743 the word was used for the fat or blubber of a whale,^[5][8] a sense English whalers took from the Dutch: Weekley notes that the chief harpooner was called the specksioneer, a corruption of Dutch speksnijder, blubber cutter.^[13] In southern Africa it was the fat of the hippopotamus, cured and eaten like bacon (1863).^[5][17] In 19th-century American English it was known as a Pennsylvania German delicacy.^[3] The OED marks the word as now American and South African,^[5] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged as chiefly dialectal.^[17] A newer borrowing, through Italian from German, is speck the cured and smoked ham of the Alto Adige (South Tyrol), recorded from 1981.^[5][11]

Timeline

• 1633 – fat meat, especially bacon or pork.^[5][3]
• 1743 – the fat or blubber of a whale.^[5]
• 1863 – the fat of a hippopotamus.^[5]
• 1981 – a cured, smoked ham from the Alto Adige.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. (chiefly dialectal) Fat meat, especially bacon or salt pork.^[17][5]
2. The fat or blubber of a whale or other sea animal.^[17][5][8]
3. (Africa) The fat of the hippopotamus, especially when cured as bacon.^[17][5]
4. A cured and smoked ham made in the Alto Adige region of Italy.^[5][11]