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spick-and-span
[ spik-uhn-span ]
adjective
- spotlessly clean and neat:
a spick-and-span kitchen.
- perfectly new; fresh.
adverb
- in a spick-and-span manner.
spick-and-span
/ ˈspɪkənˈspæn /
adjective
- extremely neat and clean
- new and fresh
Word History and Origins
Origin of spick-and-span1
Word History and Origins
Origin of spick-and-span1
Idioms and Phrases
Neat and clean, as in When Ruth has finished cleaning, the whole house is spick and span . This term combines two nouns that are now obsolete, spick , “a nail” or “spike,” and span , “a wooden chip.” In the 1500s a sailing ship was considered spick and span when every spike and chip was brand-new. The transfer to the current sense took place in the mid-1800s.Example Sentences
I doubt if Sir Francis had it all so spick-and-span—for in his day we were very nearly as far from lawn mowers as from turbines.
The spick-and-span occupants of the reception bureau evidently regarded him as Room Number So-and-so.
Spick-and-span, he might have stepped out of a glass case, and this was his invariable appearance.
Captain Jerry thought of the spick-and-span days of his wife, dead these twenty years, and sighed again.
He had recognized, despite disguising superficialities of garb and manner, Bertha's once spick-and-span butler.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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