spin [OE] An Old English word that originally meant ‘to draw out and twist fibre’. The expression to spin a yarn, ‘to tell a long, far-fetched story’, is nautical in origin. An important job on board ship was making and repairing ropes, a task which involved twisting together a number of long threads or ‘yarns’. The image of this process and the reputation sailors had for telling tall tales of fabulous far-flung lands combined to produce the phrase we know today.

Spin meaning ‘the presentation of information in a particular way, a slant’ started in the USA. It was first recorded in 1977 in the Washington Post, with spin doctor following in 1984. Spindle [OE], originally spinel, comes from ‘spin’.