• spigot •
Pronunciation: spi-gêt, spi-kit • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. Faucet, tap, stopcock. 2. A peg, plug, or pin used to control the flow of liquid from a barrel or pipe. 3. Anything that controls the flow of something.
Notes: Here is a word that has been mispronounced spicket in Scotland and the US so long (since the 19th century) that this spelling has made its way into all the respectable dictionaries. It is a lexical orphan no matter which way we spell it.
In Play: 
All bathrooms and kitchens around the world contain spigots: "Lilly plugged the drain and turned the bathtub spigot on but forgot she had done so until the ceiling over her study collapsed under the overflow of bath water." Anything that controls the flow of anything else may be referred to as a spigot: "The Internet has become a spigot of information and misinformation, and it's sometimes hard to tell the difference."
Word History: Today's Good Word was probably borrowed from a presumed Old French word (e)spigot, presumably on the basis of French dialectal espigot "ear of grain", diminutive of Old Provençal espiga "spike, ear of grain". This word descended from Latin spica "point, spike, ear of grain", which Latin inherited from PIE spei-k-/spoi-k- "point, pointed stick", source of English spike, Czech špice "spike", German Spitze "spike", Norwegian spiker "nail", and Dutch spijk "nail". With other suffixes we find Latin spina "thorn" and spada "sword", English spit and spade, Icelandic spila "point, spike", Norwegian spita "spit", and Lithuanian špilis "steeple". Without any suffix we find Dutch spie "key" and Albanian shpoj "prick". (Now a bow to longtime suggestion contributor David Myer for bringing today's abused Good Word survivor to our eyes.)
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