The Origins Of Spizerinctum
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My friend, the late Dr. Bob Breedlove, sent me an article published in the Des Moines Sunday Register in early May about 6 weeks before his untimely death in the 2005 Race Across America.
His comment alongside the article was, “I thought you made Spizerinctum up!” Here is the complete article illustrating the word Spizerinctum has been around for quite some time and actually has had many meanings. The author works for the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition Wordwatch program.
Question: My nephew claims that there is a word, “Spizzerinctum” that means something like “zest for life.” I looked in several dictionaries and did not find this word. It sounds to me like something he made up and I wonder if he is pulling my leg.
Answer: Over the years, we’ve answered a number of inquiries like yours about “spizzerinctum” (a word that has many spelling variants.) Here’s one from a letter written in 1917: “I have just had a discussion about some such word as “spizzerinctum.” Last winter I heard a speaker use the word and say it then was the newest word in the English vocabulary and meant “vim and vigor.” My friends maintain there is no such word. Could you kindly advise me?
“Spizzerinctum” is one of those words that people love to discover. It is indeed a real word – real enough to be entered in our unabridged Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, where it is defined as “the will to succeed; vim, energy, ambition.”
Spelled “Spizarinctum,” this peculiar word was used in the mid – 1800’s for “specie,” that is, for money in the form of coins. In fact, the word “spizarinctum” is thought to be simply a fanciful coinage” from “Specie.” Here’s the word used with a slightly different spelling in 1869, by someone writing about “greenbacks,” or paper money: “They (greenbacks) had gotten no further west than Marshall (Texas), and everywhere west of that, when a man named a price, he meant “Spizerinctums.”
A 1913 streetcar sign in Washington, D.C. announcing the publication of a new dictionary featured “Spizzerinktum”; “See if you can find the word in any other dictionary, “the sign boasted. As “pizzeringtom” the word was noted circa 1922 as meaning “the quintessence of pep”. “Spizerinkum” was defined in a 1944 book of US Marine Corps slang as “intestinal fortitude.”
A mayor in Columbus, Ohio is said to have been fond of the word in the 1950’s and 60’s, but in general the word seems to have floated in and out of popularity. Now it may be experiencing something of a revival. Not long ago, a catalog featuring chickens for breeding even described one particular breed as noted for being especially endowed with “spizzerinktum.”
The true story behind how I came across the word Spizerinctum goes back to 1993 when I was doing home health physical therapy. A Louisiana woman announced when I entered her home and asked how she was, “I don’t have any spizerinctum today!” I said, “What is that?” She explained it was a Southern term for pep or energy! I loved that word and when the opportunity to use it came along after the demise of my 1986 Pete Penseyres concocted complete liquid food drink known as “Ultra Energy,” I jumped at it! Spizerinctum (my spelling) made perfect sense for a nutritionally complete energy drink, especially now in light of so many other appropriate meanings for what I have tried to create with this product. To my friend Bob Breedlove I wish you God’s speed and thank you for your long friendship and camaraderie. You will be greatly missed!
Randy Ice P.T., C.C.S.
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