spatter
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈspætɚ/
rhymes: -ætə(ɹ)
Forms: form: spatter [from 1570s]
form: spatters
form: spattering
form: spattered
form: spattered
Etymology: Probably from Middle Low German or Dutch spatten (“to spout, burst”) + -er (frequentative suffix). Related to spit (“saliva”).
Senses: examples: text: When my wet chihuahua shook himself, I was spattered with smelly water.
text: His axel-tree, and chariot wheeles, all spatterd with the blood
Hurl’d from the steeds houes, and the strakes.
ref: c. 1611, George Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets, London: Nathaniell Butter, Book 20, p. 286:
text: The old Welshman came home toward daylight, spattered with candle-grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out.
ref: 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC:
text: He began to blow at the surface of the tea. He blew too hard and the tea spattered the skirt of Nurse Clock’s uniform.
ref: 1965, William Trevor, chapter 8, in The Boarding House, King Penguin, published 1983, page 85:
synonyms: spurt
glosses: To splash (someone or something) with small droplets.
examples: text: […] she seem’d to have woven the Rainbow into a loose Robe, which being so rarified that she might be seen through it, and also spatter’d with radiant Jewells in the forms of Starrs […]
ref: 1660, Nathaniel Ingelo, Bentivolio and Urania, London: Richard Marriot, Book 2, pp. 79-80:
text: The low, whitewashed houses between the red and green acacia trees are spattered with shell-holes […]
ref: 1949, Arthur Koestler, Promise and Fulfilment, New York: Macmillan, Book 2, Chapter 2, p. 218:
text: 1955, Samuel Beckett and Patrick Bowles (translators), Molloy by Samuel Beckett, in Three Novels, London: Calder, 1994, p. 128,
The roof’s serrated ridge, the single chimney-stack with its four flues, stood out faintly against the sky spattered with a few dim stars.
text: Patches of light sifting through them [the trees] spattered the concrete walks with sunshine.
ref: 1960, Flannery O’Conner, chapter 6, in The Violent Bear It Away, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, published 2007:
text: Then they began to climb, steering to open uplands spattered with yellow cinquefoil […]
ref: 1996, Guy Vanderhaeghe, chapter 19, in The Englishman’s Boy, New York: Anchor, page 178:
glosses: To cover, or lie upon (something) by having been scattered, as if by splashing.
examples: text: to spatter blood
text: Perhaps ev’n I, reserv’d by angry Fate
The last sad Relick of my ruin’d State,
(Dire Pomp of sov’reign Wretchedness!) must fall,
And stain the Pavement of my regal Hall;
Where famish’d Dogs, late Guardians of my Door,
Shall lick their mangled Master’s spatter’d Gore.
ref: 1720, Alexander Pope, transl., The Iliad of Homer, London: Bernard Lintott, Volume 6, Book 22, lines 92-97, p. 7:
text: O God, that I were in some wide field
With nothing but my battle-axe and him
To spatter his brains!
ref: 1877, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Harold, London: Henry S. King, act II, scene 2, page 70:
text: Streaks of DeHaven’s real face can be seen through the trademark face as the clown slams the hood shut in the spattered rain.
ref: 1989, David Foster Wallace, “Westward the course of empire takes its way”, in Girl with Curious Hair:
glosses: To distribute (a liquid) by sprinkling; to sprinkle around.
examples: text: The cabman spattered his few words of English.
ref: 1922, D. H. Lawrence, chapter 12, in Aaron’s Rod, London: Martin Secker, page 139:
text: […] they had seen him, at the sound of the alarm, rush like a madman from his window in Gant’s shop, leaving the spattered fragments of a watch upon his desk […]
ref: 1929, Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, New York: Scribner, Part 1, Chapter 8, p. 74:
text: […] a man with a machine gun sits in a cage suspended from the ceiling and moving like a trolley spatters bullets into the cells.
ref: 1945, Henry Miller, “The Soul of Anaesthesia”, in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, New York: New Directions, pages 88–89:
glosses: To send out or disperse (something) as if in droplets.
examples: text: Make sure the pieces of fish are dry before you put them into the hot oil so that it doesn’t spatter.
text: they fondly thinking to allay
Thir appetite with gust, instead of Fruit
Chewd bitter Ashes, which th’ offended taste
With spattering noise rejected:
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 564-567:
text: Where the headquarters tent sags, water drips down and spatters on the table.
ref: 1956, Langston Hughes, chapter 8, in I Wonder as I Wander, New York: Hill and Wang, published 1993, page 374:
text: Later, the two priests left together, […] their hoods pulled up because it had begun to spatter with rain.
ref: 1990, Edna O’Brien, “‘Oft in the Stilly Night’”, in Lantern Slides, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, page 17:
text: Most mornings he roasted lamb, turning it on a spit, where it spattered and dripped […]
ref: 1994, Paul Theroux, chapter 25, in Millroy the Magician, New York: Random House, page 220:
glosses: To send out small droplets; to splash in small droplets (on or against something).
examples: text: 1647, John Hall, “A Genethliacon to the Infant Muse of his dearest Friend” in Poems, London: J. Rothwell,
Let envy spatter what it can,
This Embryon will prove a man.
text: 1728, John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, Dublin: George Risk et al., Act II, Scene 13, “Good-morrow, Gossip Joan,” p. 42,
Why how now, Madam Flirt?
If you thus must chatter;
And are for flinging Dirt,
Let’s try who best can spatter;
text: 1770, George Saville Carey, “To a Friend” in Analects in Verse and Prose, London: P. Shatwell et al., Volume 2, p. 171,
I Wrote a letter long ago,
But did not like it, you must know,
So rather chose to take my time,
And write my own defence in rhime,
Though not in your be-crabbed stile,
To spatter, threaten, and revile;
text: […] there is nothing but may be represented upon some principle or other apparently worthy, without the wretched necessity of having recourse to spatter and vilify others.
ref: 1793, Charles Dibdin, chapter 9, in The Younger Brother, volume 3, London: for the author, page 143:
glosses: To injure by aspersion; to defame.
Synonyms: sense: cover or lie upon by having been scattered
word: strew
Related terms: splatter