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SPITTING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The act of spitting (forcefully expelling saliva)
Synonyms:
expectoration; spit; spitting
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("spitting" is a kind of...):
ejection; expulsion; forcing out; projection (the act of expelling or projecting or ejecting)
Derivation:
spit (expel or eject (saliva or phlegm or sputum) from the mouth)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb spit
Context examples:
He saw himself, stripped to the waist, with naked fists, fighting his great fight with Liverpool Red in the forecastle of the Susquehanna; and he saw the bloody deck of the John Rogers, that gray morning of attempted mutiny, the mate kicking in death- throes on the main-hatch, the revolver in the old man's hand spitting fire and smoke, the men with passion-wrenched faces, of brutes screaming vile blasphemies and falling about him—and then he returned to the central scene, calm and clean in the steadfast light, where Ruth sat and talked with him amid books and paintings; and he saw the grand piano upon which she would later play to him; and he heard the echoes of his own selected and correct words, But then, may I not be peculiarly constituted to write?
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
It was all very well for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up a tree; but it was quite a different matter for a lone wolf to encounter a lynx—especially when the lynx was known to have a litter of hungry kittens at her back.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
