Spitball vs. Spiffball

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Isaac from Portland, Oregon. How are you?

Hi, Isaac. Welcome.

Hi, Isaac. What’s going on?

Well, I’ve got a question about a phrase that came up at work recently.

The phrase is spitball or spiffball.

It’s used as a verb, and I think it means to pass ideas back and forth, like brainstorming.

One of my coworkers used it, and there was some disagreement over whether the term was spitball, S-P-I-T, or spiffball, S-P-I-F-F.

And we looked it up and we found both usages on the Internet.

So I’m just wondering what the story is between spitball and spitball.

I can kind of see where spitball would come from, you know, passing ideas back and forth, like tossing a chewed up wad of paper.

Swapping spitballs?

Well, you spit them at the ceiling and see what sticks.

That’s kind of the depression, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Whatever sticks is what you go with.

Like throwing jelly against the wall.

Basically deciding what your consensus is.

Just toss a bunch of random ideas into the group and see what everyone can go for.

But let me backtrack here.

Who is the advocate for SPIF, S-P-I-F-F?

SPIF?

So that was actually my supervisor.

He’s from California.

I don’t know if that makes any difference.

No, fire him.

Fire him.

You just fire him.

Okay, you can Google just about any error and find hits for it on the Internet.

That doesn’t make it not an error.

Yeah.

All right, so SPIF ball is not a thing.

You’ll find about 20,000, 25,000 usages of them.

A lot of them, basically usernames, not even actual, like, in context, straight-up English usage of them.

So the number of total real uses of spiffball to mean spitball is actually really low,

Especially compared against, like, the staggering tens of millions of uses of the word spitball and all of its variants.

So it’s S-P-I-T-B-A-L-L, and it means to wad up pieces of paper, moisten them with saliva,

And either to spit them or shoot them out of a straw against the wall or a ceiling.

And then the expression from the business world is you spitball.

You throw some stuff up there, see what sticks.

Whatever sticks is what you go with.

So it’s just kind of a way of developing consensus.

So is there such a thing as a spiffball?

You know, it sounds vaguely like something that Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes would come up with.

Yeah, I know. That’s what I thought.

I don’t think spiff meant spiff.

Yeah, exactly.

But he has Calvin Ball, which is not spiffball.

It’s very different.

Although the rules of Calvin Ball are so loose, maybe you could call it spiffball if you wanted to.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think the only rule is you can’t put it the same way twice, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So it’s not a thing.

Spiffball is not a thing.

It sounds like a pronunciation.

You know, Isaac, you know that I’m usually like, yeah, whatever.

If I actually think there’s room to call something a variant or to say that it’s harmless or suggest that it’s up-and-coming slang and maybe we need to keep an eye on it because it could come a new thing, this is not a thing.

Spiffball is not a thing.

Okay.

Now your big problem is how do I tell my supervisor that he was wrong?

No, is your supervisor right?

I love telling him he’s wrong.

Oh.

No, no, no.

He was wrong.

I love telling him he’s wrong.

Okay.

Hopefully you have that relationship established already.

Oh, yeah.

No, we’re, yeah, it’s a good one.

My suggestion to you is to build this up until there’s a lunch on the line or a half day off or something,

And then to tell him here’s the incontrable evidence from Martha and Grant that you don’t know what you’re talking about, dude.

All right.

Okay.

Well, I look forward to breaking the news to them.

Thanks, Isaac.

Let us know how it goes.

And if you need us to post a job ad for you, we’ll do that.

All right.

Take care now.

Thanks a lot.

All right.

Bye, Isaac.

Have a good day.

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