spicen

English

Etymology

From spice +‎ -en.

Verb

spicen (third-person singular simple present spicens, present participle spicening, simple past and past participle spicened)

1. (transitive) To make spicy, or to spice
   • 1905, A Little Book of Rutgers Tales, page 119:

     In the evening it was different. Miss Reed attended a concert arranged for charity's sake by the guests. She attended it with Vernon, but that made no difference to Jim. The masterful “rusher ” gives his opponent opportunities occasionally, to keep him in good humor and to spicen the life and interest of his quarry.

   • 2002, Andrew Harvey, The Direct Path:

     She was a vibrant, big-boned, red-faced woman straight out of Chaucer, and we were great friends; because she couldn't leave her cloister and needed to exercise every day, she had had to invent things “to spicen life up a bit.”

   • 2012, Steven Fornal, Praying The Price:

     She is confident that she has plenty of data bits to spicen up and personalize her first six shows.

Anagrams

• C-spine

Middle English

Alternative forms

• spisen, spycen

Etymology

From spice +‎ -en (infinitival suffix).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈspiːsən/

Verb

spicen

1. To spice; to add spice to something.
2. (rare) To perform embalmment with spices.

Conjugation

Conjugation of spicen (weak in -ed)

infinitive	(to) spicen, spice
	present tense	past tense
1st-person singular	spice	spiced
2nd-person singular	spicest	spicedest
3rd-person singular	spiceth	spiced
subjunctive singular	spice
imperative singular		—
plural1	spicen, spice	spiceden, spicede
imperative plural	spiceth, spice	—
participles	spicynge, spicende	spiced, yspiced

¹Sometimes used as a formal 2nd-person singular.

Descendants

• English: spice
• Scots: spice

References

• “spīcen, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-24.