spigot
noun

- a device used to control the flow of liquid from a container such as a barrel or pipe.

- a device that controls the flow of liquid from a pipe or large container; used especially in American English, and also figuratively for anything that controls supply or access.

Merriam-Webster, Cambridge English Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The story of spigot begins — unexpectedly — in a grain field.

The word first appears in written English in the late 14th century (around 1383), spelled spigot, spegot, or spikket, meaning a wooden plug used to stop the vent hole of a cask. Medieval cellars and taverns ran on barrels, and every barrel needed a stopper.

The trail leads back through Old French espigot, to Old Provençal espiga — meaning an ear of grain or spike. That, in turn, derives from Latin spīca, also meaning ear of grain or sharp point — the same root that gives us spike, spinal, and the bright star Spica (the sharpest point of the constellation Virgo).

The connection is the shape: a pointed peg, like a grain spike, driven into the hole of a barrel. By the 1520s, the word had shifted from the stopper itself to the whole device — the tap or valve that controlled the flow.

In American English, spigot became the standard word for an outdoor water tap (British English prefers tap; American English uses faucet indoors).

The figurative use — the money spigot, the government spigot, turning off the spigot — is now widespread in journalism and business language.

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TURNING THE TAP

Nobody worries much about an outdoor tap. You turn it, water comes out, job done.

In medieval Europe, barrels were the internet of their day — they moved wine, beer, grain and salted fish from one end of the continent to the other. Controlling the tap on a barrel meant controlling access to something people wanted. Monasteries, guilds and merchants all understood this. The spigot — back then a simple wooden peg — was not a plumbing detail. It was a position of power.

That logic has never gone away. Today's newspapers are full of spigots: the oil spigot, the credit spigot, the government funding spigot.

What's interesting is how often people talk about turning off a spigot rather than opening one. The default assumption seems to be that the tap is running — that money, information or power is flowing — and the dramatic moment is when someone stops it.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

ball cock, ball valve, bibcock, bung, cock, control valve, corking pin, dispenser, discharge tap, drain valve, draw-off, draw-off valve, draw tap, faucet, flow control, flow tap, fluid control, gate valve, hose bib, hydrant, nozzle, outlet, outlet cock, outlet fitting, outlet pipe, outlet spout, outlet tube, outlet valve, pipe tap, plug, plug valve, pourer, service valve, SPIGOT, spout, stopper, stopcock, supply valve, tank valve, tap, tap fitting, tap handle, tap head, valve, vent, vent valve, water outlet, water tap

Figurative (controlling a flow or supply):

choke point, conduit, control valve, data pipeline, floodgate, funding stream, gateway, key to the treasury, lever, lifeline, money tap, purse strings, release valve, resource channel, safety valve, source, SPIGOT, supply line, the handle, the throttle, turn off the tap

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

"As confidence returns, lenders gradually turn the financing SPIGOT back on."

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