spange

See also Spange

English [edit]

	A user suggests that this entry be cleaned up.
	Please see the discussion on Requests for cleanup⁽⁺⁾ for more information and remove this template after the problem has been dealt with.

Blend of spare and change, from stereotyped phrase “spare change?”, “[can you] spare any change?” Its derivation also relates to the word sponge. (That is to say spanging is sponging.)

spange (plural spanges)

Often used to refer to one’s own activities,^[1]^[2] without pejorative sense. Compare spanger, often used pejoratively to refer to others.

						1996
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

1996, Tim “Salvage”, quoted in Ian Fisher, “Erin’s looking for Leg-Rub Steve. Fly’s looking for CD’s to steal. Star’s looking for Jaya. And it’s starting to get cold.”^[1]

I don’t spange much because I really don’t like doing it. I eat out of trash cans a lot.
2009, Kelly Myers, 33, quoted in Joe Deegan, “Nowhere To Go”, San Diego Reader^[2]

Then my father would send all us kids out to ‘spange’ [beg for spare change]. You could sometimes make $50 a day by spanging. Other days you might make a dollar.

Word Watch, The Atlantic, April 1997, by Anne H. Soukhanov, executive editor of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition.