Word.ws English Dictionary

spivs

spivs is the plural of spiv.

Meaning of spiv

Noun

spiv (plural spivs)

  1. (Ireland, UK, historical) A smartly dressed person who trades in illicit, black-market or stolen goods, especially during World War II.
  2. (Ireland, UK, dated) A flashy con artist, often homeless, who lives by his wits.
    • I mean, Mayfair is just top spivs stepping into the slippers of the former gentry, and Belgravia, like I've said, is all flats in houses built as palaces, and Chelsea—well!1960 [1959], Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners, New York: Macmillan, page 65
  3. (Ireland, UK, dated, Scotland Yard) A low and common thief.
  4. (Ireland, UK, dated) A slacker; one who shirks responsibility.

Questions about spivs

What is spivs the plural of?
Spivs is the plural of spiv.

Words near spivs in the dictionary

  1. spives
  2. Spivey
  3. Spiveys
  4. spivias
  5. spivish
  6. spivs
  7. spivveries
  8. spivvery
  9. spivvier
  10. spivviest
  11. spivvily

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spivs (page history and authors); spiv (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: “spivs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spivs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.