Where does spick-and-span come from?

It is traced to Middle English.

spick-and-span

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: 1.92 in modern English

Scrabble Score

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adj

"I mopped up the kitchen floor so it was spick-and-span."
"Sir, this is a ſpell againſt 'hem, ſpicke and ſpan new, and 'tis made as 'twere in mine owne perſon, and I ſing it in mine owne defence."
"My Lady Batten walking through the dirty lane with new spicke and span white shoes."
"The Warders strutted up and down, / And kept their herd of brutes, / Their uniforms were spick and span, / And they wore their Sunday suits, / But we knew the work they had been at, / By the quicklime on their boots."
"“But the traders ruined his digestion with too much champagne, and after several years he fell for the Gospel according to the Methodists, sent his people to church, and cleaned up the beach and the trading crowd so spick and span that he would not permit them to smoke a pipe out of doors on Sunday, […]"
"Mr. and Mrs. Chow, for instance, drew up one afternoon in their spick-and-span coupe with their intolerably spotless only child sitting self-consciously beside them."

From spick-and-span-new (literally “new as a recently made spike and chip of wood”) (1570s), from spick (“nail”, variant of spike) + Middle English span-new (“very new”) (from circa 1300 until 1800s), from Old Norse span-nyr, from spann (“chip”) (cognate to Old English spón, English spoon, due to spoons once being made of wood) + nyr (“new”) (cognate to Old English nīewe, English new). Imitation of Dutch spiksplinternieuw (literally “spike-splinter new”), for a freshly built ship. Observe that fresh woodchips are firm and light (if from light wood), but decay and darken rapidly, hence the origin of the term.

more spick-and-span (comparative) most spick-and-span (superlative) spic and span (alternative) spick and span (alternative)

spick