The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, Revised Edition

729 sow I specious
Soviet has largely fallen into disuse, except
with historical reference. In standard
BrE the word is variously pronounced
/'sauviat/ and /'sDviat/. Cf. RUSSIAN.
SOW (verb) (scatter or plant seed, etc.).
The pa.t. is sowed and the pa.pple either
sown (the more usual form) or sowed.
spadeful. PI. spadefuls. See -FUL.
spastic (adj.). This term, used since the
18c. of certain medical conditions (esp.
cerebral palsy) characterized by spasmodic
movements of the limbs, was ignorantly
and offensively used by some
people in the 1970s and 1980s as a term
of abuse directed at anyone judged to
be uncoordinated or incompetent. Also
as noun.
spats.
ABBREVIATIONS l(a).
Short for spatterdashes: see
spavined (adj.), not -nned. See -N-, -NN-.
-speak. Orwell's terms Oldspeak (standard
English) and Newspeak (a sinister artificial
language used for official communications),
which he used in Nineteen
Eighty-Four (1949), gave the Englishspeaking
world a new formative elementspeak
denoting 'a particular variety of
language or characteristic mode of
speaking', as the OED has it. They were in
due course joined by many others (some
of them temporary formations), including
Haigspeak (duplicitous talk), airspeak
(unambiguous English used by air traffic
controllers), and seaspeàk (similarly unambiguous
language being adopted by
mariners). The combining form has now
produced a virtually limitless class of
contextually transparent formations. In
the last few years I have noted the following
examples, the great majority of them
from AmE sources. (Several of them are
taken from newspaper headlines and do
not occur in the text of the articles.)
archi-speak (architects), Britspeak, Bushspeak, species /'spi:fi:z/, prissily /'spiis-/, is unchanged
in the plural. The OED (1914)
catalogue-speak, Clintonspeak, collegespeak,
criticspeak, diplo-speak (diplomats),
fashionspeak, Fedspeak (Federal
gave a three-syllabled pronunciation,
government), gutterspeak, idiotspeak, thus /'spi:Jn:z/, as a legitimate variant (cf.
modelspeak, netspeak (TV networks),
Nintendo-speak (computer game), taxspeak
(language used by politicians about their
taxation policy). The Barnhart Diet. New
English (1990) lists artspeak, discospeak,
Freudspeak, Olympspeak, and splitspeak (the
vocabulary of broken relationships). Other
scholars, other lists.
spec, = speculation. See ABBREVIATIONS
i(b).
special. See ESPECIALLY).
speciality, specialty. The two words,
while they seem to cry out for different
roles, have made little progress in that
direction. The COD has it about right in
listing two main senses for speciality in
BrE: (a) a special pursuit, product, operation,
etc., to which a company or a person
gives special attention; (b) a special
feature, characteristic, or skill. It then
says that for both these senses specialty
is also used, esp. in NAmer. It also lists
a technical sense of specialty in law: an
instrument under seal; a sealed contract.
The following examples seem to support
the distinctions set down in the COD:
(speciality, all UK) I like deceiving myself. It
is comfortable. It is the House Speciality—H.
Mantel, 1986; We had eaten nothing with
the champagne except a small dish of potato
crisps, a speciality from the island of Maui,
thick and gnarled like tree bark—D. Lodge,
1991; The sons do a roaring trade with the
footpads of Deptford fields, pewter a
speciality--L. Norfolk, 1991; [specialty, all
NAmer.) She considered dog issues her
specialty-T. Drury, 1991; Big hooks came
not only from the action-oriented surgical
specialties, but the cerebral medical specialties—Logos,
1992; AI Roker, of Channel 4
News, m.c.'d, and since his specialty is
weather, not music, he probably isn't to blame
for the sélection—New Yorker, 1992; The voice
of Victor insisted that I order the Truite au
Bleu, the specialty of the place—K. Weber,
1993-
specially. See ESPECIAL(LY).
specialty. See SPECIALITY.
specie /spi:Jl/ is coin money as opposed
to paper money.
-IES), but this form dropped out of use
at some later date.
specious. Like its Latin original (specidsus),
English specious began (in the 14c.)
its life meaning 'fair or pleasing to the