Origin and history of spacy

c. 1300, "extent or area; room" (to do something), a shortening of Old French espace "period of time, distance, interval" (12c.), from Latin spatium "room, area, distance, stretch of time," a word of unknown origin (also source of Spanish espacio, Italian spazio).

From early 14c. as "amount or extent of time," and in Middle English the word was largely used of time (space of an hour, etc.). Also from early 14c. as "a place;" it is attested from mid-14c. as "distance, interval between two or more objects;" from late 14c. as "ground, land, territory; extension in three dimensions; distance between two or more points." It is recorded by early 15c. as "size, bulk," also "an assigned position."

Typographical sense of "blank type to separate words in print" is attested from 1670s. The typewriter's space-bar is from 1876, earlier space-key (1860).

The astronomical sense of "stellar depths, immense emptiness between the worlds as a characteristic of the universe" is by 1723, perhaps as early as "Paradise Lost" (1667), but common from 1890s.

In this sense a prolific 20c. compound-breeder, many perhaps modeled on earlier ones in air- : Space age is attested from 1946 in reference to the era of human conquest of space but often rather of commercial products that spun off the effort. Many of these first appear in science fiction and speculative writing: spaceship (1894, "A Journey in Other Worlds," John Jacob Astor); spacecraft (1928, Popular Science); space travel (1931); space station "large artificial satellite used as a base for space exploration" (1936, "Rockets Through Space"); space flight (June 1931, Popular Science, from April in newspapers); spaceman (1942, Thrilling Wonder Stories).

Space race in reference to competition among nations to explore space is attested from 1959. Space shuttle attested by 1970.

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards. [Sir Fred Hoyle, London Observer, 1979]

Space-saving as an adjective is from 1855 (time-and-space-saving is by 1847). Related: space-saver.

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

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Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain." (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.