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 Spoffle, verb. (colloquial).—To fuss; to bustle. Spoffish (or spoffy) = fussy; bustling; smart. Also spoffy, subs. = a busybody.

1836. Dickens, Sk. by Boz, 'Horatio Sparkins.' A little spoffish man with green spectacles. Ibid. (1838-40), Sketches, Tales, vii. He invariably spoke with astonishing rapidity; was smart, spoffish, and eight and twenty.

Spoffskins, subs. (common).—A prostitute: see Tart.

Spoil, verb. (various).—In addition to the sense (now accepted) given by Grose ('to mar, to place obstacles in the way') there are colloq. usages as follows:—To spoil for = to be eager for: as 'spoiling for a fight,' and spoiling to be invited; to spoil one's shape = to be got with child; to spoil one's mouth = to damage the face. Also in sarcastic combination, spoil-bread = a baker; spoil-broth = a cook; spoil-iron = a smith (Grose); spoil-paper = a scribbler; spoil-pudding = a long-winded preacher (Grose); spoil-sport = an unfriendly or dispirited associate or intruder: hence to spoil sport = (1) to dishearten, and (2) to prevent; spoil-trade = an unscrupulous competitor; spoil-temper = an exacting superior.

1280. [Oliphant, New Eng., i. 427. All through the century [16th] new words formed like the spilbred of 1280 (not bread-spiller) were coming in.]

1597-8. Haughton, Woman will have her Will [Dodsley, Old Plays (1874), x. 537]. The rogue is waiting yet to spoil your sport.

1611. Holland [Davies, Scourge of Folly, 81]. My Satyre shall not touch such sacred things As some Spoile-papers have dearly done of late.

1678. Cotton, Virgil Travestie [Works (1725), 74]. That I am half afraid lest he Should chance to spoil her Majesty.

1694. Motteux, Rabelais, iv. xlvii. He spied his wife lying on the ground piteously weeping and howling 'He has spoiled me. I am undone.'

d. 1704. Brown, Works, ii. 97. The French king who had spoil'd the shape of several mistresses had a mind to do the same by me.

1821. Scott, Kenilworth, xxviii. Mike Lambourne was never a make-bate, or a spoil-sport, or the like.

1821. Egan, Life in London, II. iv. 'Hang you! if you don't hold that are red rag of yours, I'll spoil your mouth.'

1864. Derby Day, 52. It will spoil sport to call in the bobbies.

1901. D. Telegraph, 6 Nov., 'Racing in the Fog.' Fog as a spoil-sport is less recurrent than snow and wind.

Spoke. To put a spoke in one's wheel (or cart), verb. phr. (old).—To do an ill turn. Occasionally (by an unwarrantable inversion) = to assist.

1661-91. Merry Drolleries [Ebsworth, 1875], 224. He lookt to be made an emperor for't, But the Divel did set a spoke in his cart.

1689. God's Last Twenty-Nine Years Wonders [Walsh]. Both bills were such spokes in their chariot-wheels that made them drive much slower.

1809. Malkin, Gil Blas [Routledge], 19. Rolando put a spoke in their wheel by representing that they ought at least to wait till the lady could come in for her share of the amusement.

1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, ix. There's a spoke in your wheel, you stuck-up little Duchess.

1872. Eliot, Middlemarch, xiii. It seems to me it would be a very poor sort of religion to put a spoke in his wheel by refusing to say you don't believe.

1898. Walsh, Lit. Curios., 1030. When solid wheels were used, the driver was provided with a pin or spoke, which he thrust into one of the three holes made to receive it, to skid the cart when it went down hill.

Spoke-box, subs. phr. (colloquial).—The mouth.

1874. Siliad, 206. Do I, for this, his brows with wreaths adorn, And lubricate his spoke-box every morn.