Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to confuse, to confound.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: spiflicate confound, silence, or dumbfound.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 18 July 2/6: She would have spiflicated the amateur parson, had not the police fortunately been pressed to shield the ‘chosen one’.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1873		British Quarterly Rev. lvii 276: The way in which the learned, racy old Hector smashes and spiflicates scientific idiots... is delicious [F&H].
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues VI 310/2: Smifligate [...] To confound; to crush; to smash.

2. of an individual, to thrash, to beat, to overcome completely.

1796		New Brighton Guide 39: Come, spiflicate that scoundrel Care, Gruel him, bruise him, never fear / Oh! may the powers gymnastic Make the ruddy youth elastic.
1832		Dublin Morn. Register 3 Oct. 4/2: Please you, my Lord, I never said I’d ‘spifflicate’ her [...] It was her said she’d ‘spifflicate’ me.
1832		Warder & Dublin Wkly Mail 15 Dec. 6/1: ‘Is it the money you want? [...] because you may want it, my honey, so toddle, or I’ll be arter spiflicating you’.
1840		R. Barham ‘The Babes in the Wood’ in Ingoldsby Legends (1842) 190: So out with your whinger at once, / And scrag Jane, while I spiflicate Johnny!
1845		Leeds Times (Yorks.) 29 Nov. 4/3: The more you kill it the more it won’t die! Chartists have ‘defeated’ it; Tories have ‘annihilated’ it; Peel has ‘spiflicated’ it; And yet the League lives.
1848		Bell’s Life in Sydney 2 Dec. 3/1: You swore you’d spifflicate me.
1856		Huddersfield Chron. (Yorks.) 28 June 3/5: Scrag Jane, while I spiflicate Johnny.
1862		Bury Times 29 Nov. 4/6: When he says that he is ‘bested’ he means that he is utterly spiflicated and catawumpus’d.
1866		Wild Boys of London I 210/1: Here, you Tommy [...] see me go and spifflicate that swell!
1867		Dickens Nicholas Nickleby 214: Mr. Pyke threatened with many oaths to ‘smifligate’ a very old man with a lantern who accidentally stumbled in her way.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1875		York Herald 5 Apr. 5/3: Instead of having ‘spiflicated’ his former opponent [...] he has made him more popular.
1882		York Herald 16 Sept. 16/6: You would be glad to run if you had such a mother-in-law. She said she would ‘spifflicate’ me.
1888		Soldiers’ Stories and Sailors’ Yarns 157: It was as much as I could do to keep him from [...] ‘spiflicating the villen’.
1893		Manchester Courier 24 June 14/4: Come into my dining-room and see how they’ve nearly spiflicated me [...] A scene of desolation me our eyes. The walls were rent and cracked. The furniture lay in a heap of ruins.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 79: Spifflicate, to stifle, kill, etc.
1899		C.J.C. Hyne Further Adventures of Captain Kettle 227: ‘Very well. Den we shall spiflicate you till you do.’ [...] ‘I wonder what spiflication is,’ mused Kettle.
1902		‘Banjo’ Paterson ‘Tar and Feathers’ in Rio Grande’s Last Race (1904) 121: But I reckon I’d better be quiet or / They’ll spiflicate me.
1918		C.J. Dennis ‘The Australaise’ Backblock Ballads 112: Biff the — foeman / Where it don’t agree. / Spifler — cate him / To Eternity.
1945		‘Australianaise’ in Mess Songs & Rhymes of the RAAF 15: Spiffler [bloody] cate him.
1959		I. & P. Opie Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 216: I’ll spiflicate you.
1961		‘Frank Richards’ Billy Bunter at Butlins 57: I’ll smash you! Oooogh! I’ll spiflicate the lot of you!
1982		N. Keesing Lily on the Dustbin 79: When family loquacity and argument becomes intolerable there is a range of exasperated objection: ‘Shut up’ [...] ‘I’ll hang you on the wall for a picture’, ‘I’ll spiflicate you’.
1993		Aus. Word Map 🌐 spifflicate. to bash up, belt, dong, hit, punch.

3. to betray to the authorities.

1823

‘Jon Bee’ Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc. 163: Spiflicate — to spiflicate a thief is to spill him, or betray the subject of his roguery.

4. of an object, to destroy.

1827		J. Wight More Mornings in Bow St. 58: Mrs Broadbent flew at her [...] and totally spifflicated her best drab beaver!
1866		Illawarra Mercury (Wollongong, NSW) 18 Sept. 2/1: [A] pugilist who has sprained his knuckles is said [...] to have ‘smashed his bunch of fives,’ [...] to have ‘spiflicated his flipper,’ or ‘played old Harry with his mawley’.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 28 Nov. 48/1: Decked out in his best, Bill Smith came west, with a load of largish pills, / An’ he told us straight they’d spiflicate all our box an’ dice of ills.
1932		D.L. Sayers Have His Carcase 445: Don’t you see [...] that it completely busts up and spifflicates the medical evidence?

5. to kill.

1831		Navy at Home II 216: Why did’nt you make him give you your freedom then? or a left him to be spiflicated by the Indian.
1833		Leicester Chron. 19 Jan. 4/4: ‘Well, may I be “spiflicated,”’ exclaimed the master chimney sweep, ‘if this arn’t werry hard lines’.
1841		Hereford Times 28 Aug. 4/4: S’help me tatur, my lord, and may I be spiflicated and die in a horse’s nightcap [...] if we didn’t kill more nor two hundred on ’em.
1848		Manchester Courier 13 Dec. 5/7: A country gardener [...] had threatened thievish boys with ‘spring guns,’ ‘man-traps’ in vain [...] None of the urchins would run the risk of learning what it was to be spiflicated.
1900–01		H. Lawson ‘A Bush Publican’s Lament’ in Roderick (1972) 467: I wish I was spifflicated before I ever seen a pub.
1904		G.M. Hewett Rat 14: If you were told that ‘last to bed’ did not have to ‘put out the light,’ but very likely got his light put out – that is to say, got spiflicated himself – you would be in a much greater hurry to get into bed.
1909		Sun. Times (Perth) 15 Aug. 4s/8: For when it comes to carnage Alfred’s just the gory man / To spiflicate the cannibal brigade.
1943		Dundee Courier 10 Sept. 4/1: I’ll spiflicate that mongrel [...] sure as eggs are eggs.

6. to cause pain or unhappiness, in some unspecified manner.

1900

Sporting Times 21 Apr. 1/2: ‘’Edge a bit, y’r worship!’ cried the prisoner hurriedly, ‘you’ll get fined forty blow yerself if you commits a nui—All right, bobby, all right; yer needn’t spifflercate me!’.

7. (Aus.) to run off, to disappear.

1911

Truth (Sydney) 29 Jan. 5/3: And that feemale do sit lonely, / Waitin’ all in vain for him; / For I think he’s spiflicated— / Gone for ever.