diff --git a/sys/kern/uipc_socket.c b/sys/kern/uipc_socket.c
--- a/sys/kern/uipc_socket.c
+++ b/sys/kern/uipc_socket.c
@@ -592,11 +592,6 @@
 
 /*
  * Transfer data from the source to the sink.
- *
- * If "direct" is true, the transfer is done in the context of whichever thread
- * is operating on one of the socket buffers.  We do not know which locks are
- * held, so we can only trylock the socket buffers; if this fails, we fall back
- * to the worker thread, which invokes this routine with "direct" set to false.
  */
 static void
 so_splice_xfer(struct so_splice *sp)
@@ -1638,7 +1633,7 @@
 		sp->wq_index = atomic_fetchadd_32(&splice_index, 1) %
 		    (mp_maxid + 1);
 	} while (CPU_ABSENT(sp->wq_index));
-	sp->state = SPLICE_IDLE;
+	sp->state = SPLICE_INIT;
 	TIMEOUT_TASK_INIT(taskqueue_thread, &sp->timeout, 0, so_splice_timeout,
 	    sp);
 	return (sp);
diff --git a/sys/sys/socketvar.h b/sys/sys/socketvar.h
--- a/sys/sys/socketvar.h
+++ b/sys/sys/socketvar.h
@@ -80,6 +80,7 @@
 	struct mtx mtx;
 	unsigned int wq_index;
 	enum so_splice_state {
+		SPLICE_INIT,	/* embryonic state, don't queue work yet */
 		SPLICE_IDLE,	/* waiting for work to arrive */
 		SPLICE_QUEUED,	/* a wakeup has queued some work */
 		SPLICE_RUNNING,	/* currently transferring data */