Spout

How to spell spout

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spout

What does spout mean?

1. nounA projecting tube, lip, or nozzle through which liquid is poured or discharged.
2. verbTo send out liquid forcefully in a stream, or to deliver words rapidly and at length.

Spout in a sentence

• noun

  The spout of the teapot was chipped and dripped onto the table.

• verb

  The broken pipe began to spout water across the kitchen floor.

• noun

  Water gushed from the spout at the base of the fountain.

• verb

  He would spout statistics at every meeting without being asked.

Where does spout come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from Middle English spouten, meaning 'to gush out' or 'to pour forcefully', and first appears in English around the 1300s. It is closely related to the Dutch spuiten, 'to spurt or squirt', and the whole family is thought to be imitative in origin, echoing the sound of liquid forced through a narrow opening. The noun sense, a projecting lip or pipe through which liquid is poured, developed from the verb, since a spout is simply the place where liquid is made to gush. By extension the verb came to describe a person who pours out words rapidly or pompously, a sense common from the 1600s onward. The simple phonetic spelling, with the 'ou' standing for the same diphthong heard in 'out', keeps the word close to the sound it has always imitated.

How the word is built

• spout (from Middle English spouten, to gush or pour out)