spit

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   expel saliva, phlegm, or sputum from the mouth

   Don't spit on the street; it's rude.

2. 2
   noun

   A thin metal or wooden rod on which meat is skewered for cooking, often over a fire.

   They roaſt a fowl, by running a piece of wood through it, by way of ſpit, and holding it over a briſk fire, until the feathers are burnt of, when it is ready for eating, in their taſte.

3. 3
   noun

   A generally low, narrow, pointed, usually sandy peninsula or bar.

   Sand-spits are unfinished beaches, and long tongues or points of land, formed of sand and shingle, by the transporting action of currents and the waves. In Coldspring harbor, a sand-spit extends from the west shore, obliquely, nearly across. [...] The materials are transported by the currents and waves, and deposited to form this spit.

4. 4
   verb

   To impale on a spit; to pierce with a sharp object.

   To spit a loin of veal.

The noun is from Middle English spit, spite, spete, spette, spyte, spytte (“rod on which meat is cooked; rod used as a torture instrument; short spear; point of a spear; spine in the fin of a fish; pointed object; dagger symbol; land projecting into the sea”), from Old English spitu (“rod on which meat is cooked; spit”), from Proto-Germanic *spitō (“rod; skewer; spike”), *spituz (“rod on which meat is cooked; stick”), from Proto-Indo-European *speyd-, *spey- (“sharp; sharp stick”). The English word is cognate with Dutch spit, Low German Spitt (“pike, spear; spike; skewer; spit”), Danish spid,...

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