Talk:Spiv

Illegal vs. fraudulent

The article defines a spiv as one who 'deals in stolen goods or fraudulent sales' but then goes on to give the specific example of a second world war black-marketeer. A black-marketeer is not necessarily a dealer in stolen or fraudulent goods but rather a dealer in illegally obtained goods, such as goods proscribed by government. If the given definition is to encompass the given example it should read, 'stolen, illegally obtained, or fraudulent goods. - Crosbiesmith (talk) 16:13, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Spiv is also used in the 1951 novel "The Day of the Triffids", page 64, last paragraph. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.148.84.112 (talk) 03:41, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Minor Examples

Some users seem to be just adding any use of spiv they come across. I have grouped these together, but I do not think they are notable or useful.Chemical Engineer (talk) 19:15, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Origins

The supposed initialisms are generally later jokes by back formation. Just because you have heard it somewhere, or even because someone puts it in a book does not mean that it is true. Please note that Wikipedia is not an etymological dictionary, but an encyclopedia. A small note about the origin of a word (from an authoritative source) is Ok, but in this case the origin is obscure, and not helped by unsupported guesses. The article should be about the topic, not the word.Chemical Engineer (talk) 19:37, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Picture of Arthur English

This image Arthur-english.jpg is not available for general illustration, only for the article Arthur English. Please do not keep adding it to this article. Chemical Engineer (talk) 19:42, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Fiction or fact?

This article treats the spiv almost as a fictional character. I think there were real spivs? Philafrenzy (talk) 15:37, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

In popular culture: Other Appearances

I added an item about the Adam Curtis documentary, The Mayfair Set, because of how the second installment's title characterizes the new breed of corporate raiders, takeover artists, and asset strippers that arose in the UK as "spivs." My references are in the various WP articles I linked. Thank you for preserving my contribution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.247.120.151 (talk) 04:02, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

That is not at all the same type of activity so I deleted it. Philafrenzy (talk) 08:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

And in so doing deleted another potential contributor. It was a small piece of work to track down the internal links for that, but since it wasn't your work, "Pffft! Dust bin!" That's much easier than finding a use for it, is it not? Piss on you guys, your little power games are not worth a sensible person's time. Later, loser... --96.247.120.151 (talk) 18:18, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Nice talking to you! Philafrenzy (talk) 18:23, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Female spiv image

What is the point of the Female Spiv image? I don't know what it shows, but it certainly adds nothing to the article. The spiv stereotype is exclusively male. --Ef80 (talk) 13:43, 6 October 2016 (UTC)