spew
/spjuː/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.90 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To speak or write quickly and voluminously, especially words that are not worth listening to or reading.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "But you get to the beach via monorail and you get to the sand and look out to the ocean and all you see is oil tankers and factories spewing smoke on the horizon. It was like some sort of futuristic dystopia."
- "The blow is not as severe as those to his leg. It is meant only to break, not crush. Blood and internal fluids spew from his nose."
- "Set such a program running and it will continue to spew out sentences until you shut it down."
- "Outside of the basic reading, writing, and math skills, and having an idea of what's out there, they were just spewing useless information."
- "They smile for the camera as they spew their phony message of tolerance, diversity and perversity."
- "Our main concerns about these people, is the propaganda they are spewing on our children and how they are twisting and distorting lies about our military and anyone that disagrees with them"
Etymology
From Middle English spewen, from Old English spīwan, from Proto-West Germanic *spīwan, from Proto-Germanic *spīwaną, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ptyēw- (“to spit, vomit”). Germanic cognates include English spit, West Frisian spije, Dutch spuien, Dutch spuwen, Low German speen, spiien, German speien (“to spew, spit, vomit”), Swedish spy, Danish spy, Faroese spýggja, Gothic 𐍃𐍀𐌴𐌹𐍅𐌰𐌽 (speiwan). Also cognate, through Indo-European, with Latin spuō (“spit”, verb), Ancient Greek πτύω (ptúō, “spit, vomit”), Albanian fyt (“throat”), Armenian թուք (tʻukʻ), Russian плева́ть (plevátʹ), Persian تف (tof), Sanskrit ष्ठीवति (ṣṭhī́vati).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: spewen, spīwan, *spīwan, *spīwaną, *(s)ptyēw-