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.

Simplified etymology

Spit in the sense of ejecting saliva comes from an Old English root that imitated the sound of spitting. The roasting spit comes from a different Old English word meaning “thin, pointed rod”; this second word also produced spit of land in the late 17th century.

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,...

Topics

External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary