Chrysti The Wordsmith: Spree - 2

Greetings verb of yours the lively little term spary subject of the last Christie the wordsmith edition is well known to English speakers but something of a mystery to etymologists a spree is a session of overindulgence as in a shopping spree though the word began appearing in print in the early 1900s. Little is known about it. The Casella dictionary of word origins suggests that sprit may derive from the French word esp meaning spirit. And here's another tantalizing possibility. The American Heritage Dictionary implies that sprit may be an alteration of a Scots word split wreath meaning cattle raid. So what was originally a word that referred to the lawless act of stealing cattle in Scotland sprees may have come down to modern English as spree. A sudden indulgence in or out burst of an activity such as a spending or shooting spree. In tracking the development of spree I became interested in its synonym binge like spree binge refers to a bout of over indulgence. The Oxford English Dictionary supplies a quotation from

the 1859 edition of a glossary of Northamptonshire words which says a man goes to the ale house to get a good binge. Now for many decades been referred to a drinking bout because binge is an old English dialectal verb meaning to soak. Then in the 1980s the word transferred to excessive eating spending and narcotics consumption binge. I'm Christie the wordsmith the daver bores Christie the wordsmith a sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.