Might wanna fact check yourself there, buddy. It absolutely is a word in English; it's just, the original article of clothing named spats fell out of use in the early 20th century and Japan started to use the term to refer to compression shorts (like as a contraction of spandex shorts) and it caught on in the West, mainly in the martial arts community.spats is not a word in english you illiterate fucks. why does everyone do this