spiv

[cultured]

What is the derivation of the word SPIV or SPIF

[fredpuli47]

There was a TV programme recently where Victoria Coren set out to find word derivations to put before the Editorial Board of the Oxford Dictionaries. One word was 'spiv'. What emerged was that it definitely did not come from an acronym 'Suspected Person Itinerant Vagrant'. She traced it to a shady, spivvy, character in a long forgotten C19 story, whose name or nickname was Spiv.Perhaps someone else on AB can fill in the details?

[Quizmonster]

The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that - though the origin is obscure - the word �spiv' is probably a variant of 'spiff', which meant to dress up, and the adjective 'spiffy', meaning "dressed up to the nines", as it were.
A key feature of the spivs in the 1930s/1940s was the flashy and expensive way they dressed compared with the drab way most other men appeared. They could afford to do that because they had lots of money from their black-market dealings.

Re the programme Fred mentions above, I seem to recall the furthest back they traced it was to the word �spive' dating to the late 19th century. It meant someone involved in the illegal selling of railway tickets.

So the word 'sharp' - whether in the sense of dress or of practice - was always associated with spivs.