spew

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English

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Etymology

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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 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).

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /spjuː/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -uː

Verb

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spew (third-person singular simple present spews, present participle spewing, simple past spewed, past participle spewed or spewn)

  1. (transitive) To eject forcibly and in a stream,
    • 2014 December 11, Megan Willett, “The 16 Most Disappointing Places To Visit On Earth”, in Business Insider UK:
      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.
  2. (intransitive) To be forcibly ejected.
    • 2013, John Andes, Control Is Jack, →ISBN, page 216:
      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.
  3. (transitive) To speak or write quickly and voluminously, especially words that are not worth listening to or reading.
    • 1999, Laurence Goldstein, Clear and Queer Thinking, →ISBN:
      Set such a program running and it will continue to spew out sentences until you shut it down.
    • 1999, Lee Carroll, Indigo Children, →ISBN, page 212:
      Outside of the basic reading, writing, and math skills, and having an idea of what's out there, they were just spewing useless information.
    • 2006, Bill Bowman, Savage Lies, →ISBN:
      They smile for the camera as they spew their phony message of tolerance, diversity and perversity.
    • 2010, Victor Bernson, Foolish Naive or Just Plain Stupid, →ISBN, page 38:
      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
    • 2010, Samuel T. Foust, Sixteen Steps to Six Figures: A Game Plan for Sales Success, →ISBN, page 9:
      It is important to realize that communicating product knowledge requires feature and benefit components that prove more effective than simply spewing raw data such as specifications, dimensions, horsepower, and torque.
  4. (intransitive) To be written or spoken voluminously.
    • 2011, Kari Rains, It Doesn't Hurt That Bad: And Other Lies My Mom Told Me, →ISBN, page 31:
      The lies continued to spew forth.
  5. (intransitive, informal) To vomit.
    • 2008, Colin Shaddick, Isn't Sex Noisy, →ISBN, page 41:
      Bleeding gums an' no saliva can make your partner spew.
  6. (intransitive) To ejaculate.
    • 17th century, widely attributed to John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester:
      I rise at eleven, I dine about two, I get drunk before seven, and the next thing I do; I send for my whore, when for fear of a clap, I spend in her hand, and I spew in her lap
    • 2012, F.W. Brooks, The Tithes of March: A Novel by F.W. Brooks, →ISBN:
      Inquiring minds may be wondering what could possibly cause the rev to behave in such a fashion, thereby diverting his attention away from such a holy task. Well, the answer lies deep. Not deep within his heart, mind, or soul. But deep inside his clammy right hand, which was clutching a handful of shiny black horse hair that had been woven into the back of Daphne's unsteady head. After the rev had spewed his load in Daphne's mouth, he reached down and picked up the Holy Bible,
    • 2017, Carl East, The Future of Sex:
      She swiftly pulled herself away, and turned around to face him on her knees, as both cocks jerked abruptly and began to spew their load.
  7. (intransitive, leather-working) To develop a white powder or dark crystals on the surface of finished leather, as a result from improper tanning.
    • 1907, Shoe Retailer and Boots and Shoes Weekly, volume 63, page 65:
      The spewing or moulding of upper leather is something that causes considerable annoyance.
    • 1920, The Leather Manufacturer, volumes 31-32, page 409:
      A manufacturer writes: We have had so much trouble with colored side leather and both colored and black cabrettas spewing within the past six or eight months that we are at our wits' end to overcome it. All of the tanners from whom we buy the stock contend that this is the best indication that all the animal fats have not been extracted from the leather.
    • 2004, George Wypych, Handbook of Plasticizers, →ISBN, page 77:
      Plasticizers may react differently. For example, some will spew immediately, some after continuous testing for a prolonged period of time, and, in some cases, the plasticizer will reside on a material surface only when the material is under compression stress.
    • 2006, Marion Kite, Roy Thomson, Conservation of Leather and Related Materials, →ISBN, page 115:
      A leather dressing may brighten the object and give it a 'finished' look, but may not actually contribute to its conservation. Finishes may lead to problems in the long run, so care should be taken. Dressings may absorb dirt and may create a tacky surface. If they contain inappropriate ingredients or if too much is applied these may spew onto the surface.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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spew (usually uncountable, plural spews)

  1. (slang) Vomit.
    • 1810, Oddicurious, The oddest of all oddities, page 23:
      Just after you've din'd, take a dish that is large, And into it what you have eaten discharge; Then get all the rest that are at the table, to spew in the same as long as they're able; Let them strain very hard, 'till all is brought up, For the more spew there is, the better the soup;
    • 2001, Douglas Maddon, The English Department's Whores, page 247:
      Poor old Sedgwick had been chased around the rugger pitch by a lunatic in a car, and then seen his researcher covered in spew from a drunken student.
    • 2011, Gillian Somers, Julie Cain, Megan Jeffery, Essential VCE Business Management Units 1 and 2, →ISBN, page 122:
      It was a smart gesture on the part of the nanny agency, who is often dealing with mums who are returning to work — many of whom would welcome a complimentary makeover after months of sleep deprivation and baby spew.
    • 2012, Dean Koontz, From the Corner of his Eye, →ISBN:
      'Harder to detect than ipecac or apomorphine hydrochloride.' 'Detect?' Parkhurst asked. 'In the spew.'
  2. (slang) Ejaculate or ejaculation.
    • 2016, Marah J. Hardt, Sex in the Sea, →ISBN:
      Sea urchins, for example, release between ten and one hundred billion sperm with every ejaculation. That's two orders of magnitude more than the few hundred million sperm per spew an average human bloke can dish out.
  3. Nonsense or lies.
    • 2009, Lee Kierig, Where, Is Infinite Love?, →ISBN:
      First thing you gotta have is some sort of confounding unfounded prejudicial spew and contrived agenda aimed at humanity.
    • 2013, John Andrew Fredrick, The King of Good Intentions, →ISBN, page 203:
      I came out with it: “What were you doing listening to her spew that spew, anyway?
  4. Material that has been ejected in a stream, or the act of spewing.
    • 2011, Stephen Hunter, Night of Thunder, →ISBN:
      He felt the flimsy canvas yield without a whisper, devoured by the roaring bull of the truck, and the whiskey bottles shattered in a spew of brownish chaos, asparkle with the light, blown this way and that by the big vehicle's velocity.
  5. A white powder or dark crystals that appear on the surface of improperly tanned leather.
    • 1903, Rowland A. Ease, Leather Trades' Review, page 644:
      Most men familiar with the handling of leather must occasionally have come across samples showing a whitish scum, or spew, upon the surface.
    • 1950, American Leather Chemists Association, The Journal of the American Leather Chemists Association:
      Out of 70 leather samples, 15 developed heavy spew in two to six months.
    • 2004, George Wypych, Handbook of Plasticizers, →ISBN, page 77:
      Plasticizer spew is determined by observation of samples bent through an arc of 180o.
  6. Adhesive that is squeezed from a joint under pressure and held across the joint by a fillet, thereby strengthening the joint.
    • 2012, R. D. Adams, Structural Adhesive Joints in Engineering, →ISBN, page 42:
      The spew is represented by a triangular fillet 0.5 mm high. It can be seen that, because of the predominance of the major principal stress, the adhesive at the ends of the adhesive layer and in the spew fillet is essentially subjected to a tensile load at about 45° to the axis of loading. The highest stresses occur within the spew at the corner of the unloaded adherend, the presence of the 90° corner introducing a stress-concentration effect.
    • 2015, Chun Hui Wang, Cong N. Duong, Bonded Joints and Repairs to Composite Airframe Structures, →ISBN, page 25:
      For a spew corner configuration shown in Figure 2.2 with the adhasive modulus far smaller than the adherent modulus, the order of the stress singularity in the corner A and B can be obtained from the WIlliam's solution under plane strian condition, and it is given in Figure 2.3. It is clear that spew corner would be free of singulatirites when the fillet angle is less than a critical angle, which is dependent on the Poisson's ration of the adhesive.
    • 2018, Sergio T. Amancio Filho, Jorge F. dos Santos, Lucian-Attila Blaga, Joining of Polymer-Metal Hybrid Structures: Principles and Applications, →ISBN:
      Besides bondline thickness control, the adhesive fillet (called adhesive spew) is an important issue in joint assembly. The spew is the result of the adhesive squeezed out of the lap region at the moment of the joint manufacture. It was shown that significant increases in shear strength of lap joints, compared with square-ended bondlines, can be achieved through the formation of an adhasive spew at the overlap ends.

Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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Anagrams

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Middle English

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Verb

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spew

  1. Alternative form of spewen
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