spit

Two quite different noises may be hiding inside this tiny word. One is the wet, explosive spit descended from Old English spittan and probably born as an imitation of the act itself—the linguistic equivalent of “ptooey.” The other is the medieval cook’s spit, a sharp rod from the Proto-Indo-European idea of a “sharp stick,” sharing distant family territory with words for spikes and spears. By the Middle English period, people could spit meat, spit venom, or spit sparks from a fire, while “to spit at someone” had already become a gesture of contempt in Old English. The two histories eventually look identical on the page, but one begins in the mouth and the other beside a roasting fire: remember spit as either a sound escaping your lips or a spike turning dinner over the flames.