Word.ws English Dictionary

spandy

spandy adjective: neat, fine, very good.

Adjective

spandy

  1. (archaic, colloquial) Neat, fine, very good.
    • My silk stockings and two pairs of spandy gloves are my comfort. You are a dear, to lend me yours, Jo1869, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, page 126
    • O, poor dandy, once so spandy,
      Golden dancer on the lea!
      Older growing, white hair flowing,
      Bald head dandy now is he.1894, Lizzie Tristram, Nameless Stories for Supplemental Reading and General Exercises, page 14

Adverb

spandy

  1. (archaic, colloquial, often) Entirely, nicely, very.
    • I have heard of a ghost that always came in a new coat, smartly buttoned up, and a spandy clean dickey.1838, Timo. Titterwell [Samuel Kettel], “Thoughts on seeing ghosts”, in Yankee Notions, page 115
    • O, I forgot, the woman was wicked and she made her little girls sit in the parlor, all dressed up spandy clean, and she made Cindrilla sit in the coal-hod.1891, Sophie May, Little Prudy, page 111

Origin of spandy

Uncertain. Perhaps a variant of spander-new, or from spick-and-span, both attested from the 17th century, while spandy clean appears in 1838 (see quotations below). Both spander-new and spick-and-span come from earlier span-new, which is attested from c. 1300.

Phrases with spandy

Questions about spandy

What does spandy mean?
Spandy means neat, fine, very good.
What part of speech is spandy?
Spandy can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near spandy in the dictionary

  1. spandrel
  2. spandrelled
  3. spandrels
  4. spandril
  5. spandrils
  6. spandy
  7. spane
  8. spaned
  9. spanemia
  10. spanemic
  11. spaneria

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spandy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “spandy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spandy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.