The story
- Scots · derived fromspindrift
- English todayspoondrift
Probably a variant of Scots spindrift. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests it is derived from spoon + drift (“mass of matter driven or forced onward together in a body, etc., especially by wind or water”), spoon being a variant of spoom (“to sail briskly with the wind astern, with or without sails hoisted”), but this is doubted by the Scottish National Dictionary: see spindrift.
Words from the same roots
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.