The story
- Romani · derived fromspiv“sparrow”
- English todayspiv
Unknown. Perhaps from spiff, spiffy. Spiv was the nickname of Henry Bagster, a Londoner arrested a number of times in 1904-6 for activities as described below, and may have been the archetype. Also possibly from Romani spiv (“sparrow”), as active and opportunistic.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.