Squirt

How to spell squirt

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce squirt

What does squirt mean?

1. verbTo force liquid out in a thin, fast stream from a narrow opening.
2. nounA short, thin jet of liquid forced from a narrow opening.

Squirt in a sentence

• verb

  Press the bottle gently to squirt a little glue onto the join.

• noun

  A quick squirt of washing-up liquid is enough for one pan.

• verb

  She likes to squirt lemon juice over the grilled fish before serving.

• noun

  The recipe needs only a squirt of olive oil in the pan.

Where does squirt come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Squirt is one of those vividly physical English words whose origins are genuinely uncertain, and it is almost certainly imitative, coined to echo the sudden hiss of liquid forced through a narrow gap. It is first recorded in English in the fifteenth century, initially as a verb describing the ejection of liquid in a thin jet. Many scholars connect it to Low German and Dutch words of similar sound and sense, such as the dialectal swirten, meaning to spurt or gush, though no single ancestor can be proved. The spelling settled with the awkward 'squ' cluster and the 'ir' vowel because that combination best captured the squeezed, hissing noise the word imitates. By the seventeenth century it had also become a contemptuous slang noun for a small or insignificant person, a sense that survives in casual speech today. Because the word was built from sound rather than borrowed from Latin or Greek, its etymology remains best described as echoic and only loosely traceable.

How the word is built

• squirt (a single imitative root; no prefix or suffix)