Spat

How to spell spat

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spat

What does spat mean?

1. nounA brief, petty argument or dispute, usually over something trivial.
2. verbThe past tense of 'spit', meaning ejected saliva or matter from the mouth.

Spat in a sentence

• noun

  The couple had a quick spat over whose turn it was to cook.

• verb

  The toddler spat out the medicine the moment he tasted it.

• noun

  The two colleagues patched up their spat before the meeting started.

• verb

  She spat the bitter seed into a napkin.

Where does spat come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word has more than one story behind it. As the past tense of 'spit', it descends from the Old English verb 'spittan', meaning to eject saliva or matter from the mouth, an imitative word built to echo the sound of the action itself; the form 'spat' arose alongside 'spit' as one of several past tenses English allowed. The noun meaning a brief, petty quarrel appeared in American English in the early 1800s and is probably also imitative, suggesting a quick slap or sharp exchange of words. The footwear sense is a shortening of 'spatterdash', a long legging worn to keep mud and water off the legs, with 'spatter' describing the splashing it guarded against. The shellfish sense, naming the young spawn of oysters and similar creatures, is recorded from the 1600s and is of uncertain origin. The short, blunt spelling keeps all these meanings tidy and rarely trips writers up.

How the word is built

• single root spat; as a verb form it is the past tense of 'spit' (spit
• vowel change), with the noun senses developing separately