Origin and history of espadrille

capital of Laconia in ancient Greece, famed for the severity of its social order, the frugality of its people, the valor of its arms, and the brevity of its speech. Also for dirty boys, men vain of their long hair, boxing girls, clumsy iron money, and unpalatable black broth.

The name is said to be from Greek sparte "cord made from spartos," a type of broom plant, a word modern etymology traces to a suffixed form of PIE root *sper- (2) "to turn, twist" (see spiral (adj.)). If so, perhaps the reference is to the cords laid as foundation markers for the city, but the story could be folk etymology.

the later Romans evidently found words beginning in sc-, sp-, st- difficult or unpleasant to pronounce; in Late Latin forms begin to emerge in i- (such as ispatium, ispiritu), and from 5c. this shifted to e-. The development was carried into the Romanic languages, especially Old French, and the French words were modified further after 15c. by natural loss of -s- (the suppression being marked by an acute accent on the e-), while in other cases the word was formally corrected back to the Latin spelling (for example spécial). Hence French état for Old French estat for Latin status, etc. It also affected Romanic borrowings from Germanic (such as espy, eschew).

A different e- is a reduced form of Latin ex- before consonants (see ex-), and the e- in enough is an unfelt survival of an Old English alternative form of ge-.