subs. (old).—1. Mettle; spirit; pluck (GROSE). Hence SPUNKIE (Scots’) = (a) a plucky fellow, a lad of mettle; and (b) a will-o’-the-wisp; SPUNKY = spirited; TO SPUNK UP = to show fight.
1772. BRIDGES, A Burlesque Translation of Homer, 262.
| Whether quite sober or dead drunk, | |
| I know, my dear, you’ve too much SPUNK. |
1773. GOLDSMITH, She Stoops to Conquer, i. 2. The Squire has got SPUNK in him.
1784. BURNS, The Jolly Beggars,
| Sir Violino, with an air | |
| That shewed a man of SPUNK. | |
| Ibid. (1786), Address to the Deil. | |
| An’ aft your moss-traversing SPUNKIES | |
| Decoy the wight that late and drunk is. | |
| Ibid. (c. 1786), Prayer to the Scotch Representatives | |
| Erskine, a SPUNKIE Norland billie. |
1789. G. PARKER, The Happy Pair [FARMER, Musa Pedestris (1896), 68]. With SPUNK let’s post our neddies.
c. 1790. Kilmainham Minit [Ireland Sixty Years Ago], 88.
| We saw de poor fellow was funkin’, | |
| De drizzle stole down from his eye, | |
| Do we tought he had got better SPUNK in. |
1796. WOLCOT (‘Peter Pindar’), Works, i. 245.
| In that snug room where any man of SPUNK | |
| Would find it a hard matter to get drunk. |
1819. T. MOORE, Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress, 24. His SPUNKIEST backers were forc’d to sing small.
1838. WILLIAM WATTS (‘Lucian Redivivus’), Paradise Lost, 11.
| Or two, or three, they’ll show more SPUNK, | |
| And fight much better when half drunk. |
1853. LANDOR, Imaginary Conversations, ‘William Penn and Lord Peterborough.’ Grave dons … grown again as young and SPUNKY as undergraduates.
1871. H. B. STOWE, Oldtown Fireside Stories, 67. Parsons is men, like the rest on us, and the doctor had got his SPUNK up.
1896. LILLARD, Poker Stories, 143. I admire your SPUNK … most women faint when they see me.
2. (streets’ and Scots’).—In pl. = matches. SPUNK-FENCER = a match-vendor. Hence = a spark.
1815. SCOTT, Guy Mannering, xi. A SPUNK o’ fire in the red room.
3. (venery).—The seminal fluid; METTLE (q.v.).
