SPUTTERING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Sputtering

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/spˈətərɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Sputter v. t. To spit out hastily by quick, successive efforts, with a spluttering sound; to utter hastily and confusedly, without control over the organs of speech. "In the midst of caresses, and without the least pretended incitement, to sputter out the basest accusations."

Sputter v. i. (past & past part. sputtered; pres. part. sputtering)

To spit, or to emit saliva from the mouth in small, scattered portions, as in rapid speaking.

To utter words hastily and indistinctly; to speak so rapidly as to emit saliva. "They could neither of them speak their rage, and so fell a sputtering at one another, like two roasting apples."

To throw out anything, as little jets of steam, with a noise like that made by one sputtering. "Like the green wood... sputtering in the flame."

See images of 'Sputtering'

Etymology of 'Sputtering'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Sputtering" Quotes from Famous Books

... ones. I wonder what the plague can keep him so long; he must have been gone an hour. There, steady, steady, old horse. Confound this weed! What rascals these tobacconists are! You never can get a cheroot now worth smoking. Every one of them goes sputtering up the side, or charring up the middle, and tasting like tow soaked in saltpetre and tobacco juice. Well, I suppose I shall get the real thing ...

— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... Adelaide represent that all the taste and skill was in the laying out the leaves, and pinning them down, and that anyone could put on the ink; in vain did Mary represent the dirtiness of the work: this was the beauty of it in her eyes; and the sight of the black dashes sputtering through the comb filled her with emulation; so that she entreated, almost piteously, to be allowed to "do" an ivy loaf, which she had hastily, and not very carefully, pinned out with Mary's assistance—that is, she ...

— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... time, the maid-servant filled the pan with milk and set it over the fire to heat it for the children's supper. She had scarcely done this, though, when there was a great sizzling and sputtering, and the milk was burned so badly that not even ...

— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... sank when it was seen that the chief neither held out his hand nor moved from his seat. Silver-Tongued and sunny-hearted, the Jarl's son was well-beloved. There was a long pause, in which there was no sound but the crackling of flames and the loud sputtering of fat. ...

— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... gorge in front of us the Mexicans suddenly checked their horses, bringing them plunging on their haunches in the dust, and then swung round upon their pursuers, while from every crag and bush at the side of the gorge the concealed riflemen sprang into view—and the sputtering of the machine guns swept the advancing column with ...

— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock

More quotes...