{"id":7939,"date":"2012-12-03T16:15:32","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T16:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=7939"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:58:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:58:20","slug":"spench-spence-and-sbens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=7939","title":{"rendered":"Spench, spence and sbens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently a friend told me that in North Wales the area under stairs is know as the <strong>spench<\/strong> &#8211; I hadn&#8217;t heard it before and didn&#8217;t know how to write it so this spelling is a guess. I found spench in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=SPENCH\">Urban Dictionary<\/a>, which defines it as &#8220;the area under the stairs (often a cupboard) where things are stored. Used in North Wales.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/kev_bite\/23811137830\/in\/photolist-Ch7iH9-9QJn6j-qCsKF1-DVaQkk-nRa1m5-8yH3oS-2NzDSZ-JYqger-8yDXHv-efCSeR-8HapBQ-RrZ2ni-3JMnJw-2htwdCd-7DMaui-fwezdk-hfxZfv-2nx7nFe-eEUqtv-2iRKyyv-ppxH59-2tDQK8-p5qGSY-hAutAh-2owTsyz-4o8YbJ-fA629v-ddsT1p-7DMatt-2ocM8z8-quFLEr-kYDnxR-rjk59a-bBpNnY-hWVUZ3-2dLkF9V-7DMatV-hYtzHE-2muxv7h-2jvVE5b-cjjVby-db3wzE-27UGPRj-7cKMza-cfLqoU-2jBLyXZ-2h9kzNq-VXEzF8-2gksqdv-hjFzhF\" title=\"Cupboard under the stairs\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/5634\/23811137830_997f752df8_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\" alt=\"Cupboard under the stairs\"\/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In the <em>Geiriadur Mawr<\/em>, one of my Welsh dictionaries, I found the Welsh word <strong>sbens<\/strong>, which is defined as &#8220;twll dan y grisiau&#8221; (a hole under the stairs) and is translated as <strong>spence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The OED defines <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/186254?rskey=mg2bfa&amp;result=1&amp;isAdvanced=false#eid\"><strong>spence<\/strong><\/a> as &#8220;a room or separate place in which victuals and liquor are kept; a buttery or pantry; a cupboard.&#8221; and says that it is dialectal or archaic. It comes from the Old French word <em>despense<\/em> (to dispense), from the Latin word <em>dispendere<\/em> (to dispense, weigh out; pay out; open, spread out), from the Latin word <em>pendere<\/em> (to hang; depend; weigh out; pay) plus the prefix <em>dis-<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Have you heard this word before, or do you have another word for the area\/cupboard under the stairs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently a friend told me that in North Wales the area under stairs is know as the spench &#8211; I hadn&#8217;t heard it before and didn&#8217;t know how to write it so this spelling is a guess. I found spench in the Urban Dictionary, which defines it as &#8220;the area under the stairs (often a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,15,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-latin","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7939"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24162,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939\/revisions\/24162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}