spiffy
pronunciation
How to pronounce spiffy in British English:
UK [ˈspɪfi]
How to pronounce spiffy in American English:
US [ˈspɪfi]
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- Adjective:
- marked by smartness in dress and manners
Word Origin
- spiffy (adj.)
- 1853, of uncertain origin, probably related to spiff "well-dressed man." Uncertain relationship to spiff (n.) "percentage allowed by drapers to their young men when they effect sale of old fashioned or undesirable stock" (1859), or to spiflicate "confound, overcome completely," a cant word from 1749 that was "common in the 19th century" [OED], preserved in American English and yielded slang spiflicated "drunk," first recorded in that sense 1902.
Example
- 1. You 're sure spiffy in your new dress .
- 2. Spiffy up your music with album art .
- 3. Maybe you typed it into that spiffy new productivity app only to have it buried in other screens .
- 4. His uniform was spiffy and neatly ironed , so he had that going for him .
- 5. Since the alternatives to the train are somewhat better in modern western nations than they were in the india of 1860 , I doubt that spiffy high-speed rail links will have quite the same effect .