We can't find a dictionary anywhere that hasn't left out at least three colorful meanings of the little-known, quaint old nautical term spitcher.

It's commonly acknowledged that this Maltese derivation from the early 1900s means to be finished or done for, sunk (as in a downed submarine), demolished, permanently lost, damaged beyond repair, gone forever.

But who else will tell you that spitcher is also a piece of tile used in hopscotch?  (Gleanings Revisited: Nostalgic Thoughts Of a Bedfordshire Farmer's Boy by E. W. O'Dell, 1995).

Or that a spitcher is a canal boat's quant pole?  ("I was born on a canal boat, and often tumbled in and had to be fished out by father with the spitcher" [Fire Island: Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track by George Manville Fenn, 1894]).

Or that a spitcher is an assassination?  (Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night, 1949).