Can you have too many books as a child? I grew up in a household with many books but few that I chose myself – which may explain why I favoured those few that did not come heralded with heavy parental recommendations, but as presents from distant relations or family friends. One of these was the Ladybird book What to Look for in Autumn (1959), by E L Grant Watson, with illustrations by C F Tunnicliffe, which I read often, the illustrations becoming fixed in my memory. Only many years later I read the other books in the series, including What to Look for in Winter, which currently sits in a place where it is certain to be opened, more or less daily.
In describing yew berries, Watson talks about them being eaten by thrushes and blackbirds, which ‘usually spew them up again. If you look near yew trees, you will see their spewings’.
The Oxford English Dictionary currently describes the word ‘spew’ as ‘Not now in polite use’. It was once polite enough to feature in the King James Bible, in four locations, notably the well-known ‘because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth’, in the Revelation of St John, and the lesser known, but more generally relevant ‘Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more’, in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah.
In passing, as an indication of how polite the word once was, the OED cites Alexander Pope’s Epistle to the Earl of Burlington (1731).
The rich Buffet well-colour'd Serpents grace,
And gaping Tritons spew to wash your Face.
Lucky Earl of Burlington.
Farmer and Henley’s Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present (1905) offers only the obscene application of the term, and only in the spelling ‘spew’, with no indication that the word in the sense of vomiting was dubious. H C Wyld’s The Universal Dictionary of the English Language (first published in 1931) had no concerns regarding acceptability, offering the definitions 1 To vomit. 2 (of gun) To sink at the muzzle after too quick firing. And as a transitive verb To vomit up, eject.
There are two questions here, first regarding its degree of impoliteness, and second regarding spelling. The term does not feature in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, but seems now to sit at the edge of acceptability. When did it start to become dodgy? Presumably some time after 1960.
The spelling ‘spue’ emerged during the Middle English period, but according to the OED faded in the 19th century, while the –ew spelling survived throughout from the ninth century to the present.
Nathan Bailey’s An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1730 edition) gives only ‘spew’, as does the abbreviated edition of Johnson’s dictionary (1788). Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language (1852 edition) gives ‘spew’, and though Webster did change his mind about spellings, this was the spelling used in the first edition, of 1828, and further back in his The American spelling book: containing the rudiments of the English language : for the use of schools in the United States, of 1809.
Nuttall’s Standard Dictionary of 1926 gives only ‘spew’, but Wyld’s Universal Dictionary gives two spellings – spew and spue; these two spellings were offered also in the 1980 edition of The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary. The current online OED gives only ‘spew’.
The dictionaries seem to have preferred the spelling ‘spew’ alone up till around 1930, and dropped ‘spue’ after 1980, which roughly coincides with the point at which the word came to be deemed impolite. Is a connection fanciful? Does the spelling ‘spew’ somehow mimic the sound of the action more closely than ‘spue’, and thus render the whole thing unpleasant? Do analogous spellings help? Flue, glue, blue, true, are completely neutral, contrasted with chew, threw, blew, flew, and the possibility of graphically physical associations. These are selected to make an entirely unscientific point, but another approach might be more fruitful. Given the choice of two spellings in the two sentences following, which spelling looks more appropriate, ‘spued’ or ‘spewed’?
The animal …. its guts out on the ground.
The locomotive …. fire and sparks out onto the track.
It is noticeable too that in the scientific citations from after 1800 given in the OED the spelling ‘spue’ strongly outnumbers the spelling ‘spew’.
All of these are tiny influences, but tiny influences can have strong effects in language change. After a conversation with friends regarding whether ‘-ize’ or ‘–ise’ is preferable, it is clear that the slightest thought that ‘-ize’ might be an Americanism turns out to be an absolute decider. No matter that the spelling may have originated in the British Isles.
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