Forms: α. 8 spilakee, 9 spilleken, -ekin, -acan, 8– spillikin, 9 -iken, spilikin. β. 9 spel(l)ican, spelekin. [app. a diminutive of SPILL sb.1]
1. pl. A game played with a heap of slips or small rods of wood, bone, or the like, the object being to pull off each by means of a hook without disturbing the rest.
α. 1734. Mrs. Delany, Life & Corr. (1861), III. 211. Your busyness done, and you at ease To take your game at spilakees.
1800. Mar. Edgeworth, Belinda, xix. Belinda was playing with little Charles Percival at spillikins.
1864. Miss Yonge, Trial, I. 173. In the nursery he was, playing at spillekens with his left hand.
1884. Punch, 16 Feb., 73/2. I have heard that the Bishops play Spilikins for cups of tea.
β. 1869. Miss Montgomery, Misunderstood, xi. 211. Eagerly waiting for his game of ‘Spelicans.’
1896. Beardsley, Under the Hill (1904), 17. Spiridion … looked up from his game of Spellicans and trembled.
b. One of the slips with which this is played.
1883. Mrs. R. T. Ritchie, Bk. Sibyls, iv. 220. The spillikens lie in an even ring where she had thrown them.
1890. H. S. Hallett, 1000 Miles on Eleph. in Shan States, 251. Dead bamboos lay like spellicans cast about in every direction.
2. (See quot.)
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Spillikins, pegs of wood bone or ivory, for marking the score of cribbage or other games.
3. fig. In pl., Splinters; fragments.
1857. Reade, White Lies, III. ix. 127. The shot … knocked him into spillekins.
1886. Illustr. Lond. News, 3 July, 2/1. I do not want to see the British empire split into spillikins.
4. attrib., as spillikin-heap, twig, etc.
1860. Zoologist, XVIII. 7060. Stepping cautiously and delicately over the spillacan twigs, like a Catholic priest in a crowded thoroughfare.
1891. V. C. Cotes, Two Girls on Barge, 119. Not frivolous tea in a Sévres eggshell with a spellican development of spoon.
1900. E. A. Irving, in Blackw. Mag., July, 57/1. We became involved in a spillikin-heap of cross-purposes.
