Up until about the 1920s, if you were a well-dressed man (or, sometimes, woman), you’d often wear “spats” over your shoes. Spats were cloth covers for the tops of shoes, extending up to the ankle. In some accounts, King George V of England was partly responsible for changing the style away from spats; in 1926 he began appearing in public without them. People were, of course, shocked at first, but then followed suit and began discarding their spats.
By 1936, this commentary appeared in the Associated Press: “in recent years well-dressed men have been discarding spats because they have become the property of the rank and file.” As late as the 1950s the occasional spats-wearer could be found, but since then they haven’t been seen at all.
The word “spats” seems a bit odd at first, but it has an etymological evolution that’s pretty easy to follow. People had been riding horses for centuries, and when a horse trotted through dirt and mud the rider’s legs tended to get pretty dirty. Clothing was expensive back then, and it was almost impossible to find a good dry-cleaner — not to mention that you’d probably travel there on your horse, so by the time you got home your pantaloons would be back in the same filthy state. The obvious solution was to wear something over your pants to protect them from the “spatter.” By the 1600s these pants-protectors were called “spatterdashes.”
Even Robinson Crusoe, marooned and alone, felt he needed spatterdashes: “Stockings and shoes I had none, but had made me a pair of somethings, I scarce knew what to call them, like buskins, to flap over my legs, and lace on either side like spatterdashes…”
By the 1800s many people started traveling in closed wagons and carriages instead of riding in the saddle and subjecting their lower extremities to the elements. Spatterdashes evolved from utilitarian tools to smaller, more fashion-oriented accessories that covered only the tops of shoes instead of your whole leg. They still served to protect your shoes, if need be, but even that wasn’t as necessary as it had been, as city streets began to be paved and include storm drains to reduce puddles. As the spatterdashes shrank to just ankle-size, the word “spatterdash” likewise shrank — to “spats.”
There are, of course, other “spats” in English. A juvenile oyster or clam is a “spat;” a flat implement that today we’d call a “spatula” was called a “spat” in the 1600s; a device like a badminton racquet (and called a spat) was used in the 1800s to play games; and if you were minding your own business walking about town and suddenly some urchin chasing a ball with his spat tripped over a spat and fell beside you, spattering your spats, you might engage in a bit of a spat over it. Wearing spats probably put you in that sort of mood — something similar happened in “Jill the Reckless,” a 1921 comic novel by P. G. Wodehouse: “‘Just because you’ve got white spats,’ proceeded Henry, on whose sensitive mind these adjuncts of the costume of the well-dressed man about town seemed to have made a deep and unfavourable impression, ‘you think you can come mucking around and messing abart and interfering and mucking around.’”
