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Topic: Spur

A fellow whose love of language has afforded him hours of pleasure was struck by a question for which he had no immediate answer. Since the usual sense of a spur refers to a pointed device secured to the heel of an equestrian, how has it happened that spur of the moment describes something hastily extemporized, or occurring or developing without premeditation?

Our friend's spur-of-the moment query prodded us to confirm something we were pretty certain of already: that the spur in spur of the moment has more to do with the urging of the horse than it does with the fact that the urger is riding a horse.

In fact, the spur—the pointed device secured to a rider's heel—has ancient kin in terms meaning to kick. In addition to the horse-kicking spur, spur has at least two other meanings associated with goading to action. It can be synonymous with stimulus—as when a book acts as a spur to the imagination—and it can name the "stiff sharp spine attached to the metatarsus of a rooster's leg that aids in cockfighting." So the spur of the moment might well be understood as the sudden kickstarting of time.

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mrgreen