Spit, sb., a small, low tongue of land projecting onto water; a shuttle pin; a straight horizontal stroke used as a marking in books; the fluid secreted by the glands of the mouth. Orange Crush. I slid my dime across the counter at Bill Chew’s, and he pulled a pop wet from the cooler and put it in my hand. It made me greedy. I got maybe one a week, and I wanted it all. Even the bottle was beautiful—its long skinny neck, the raised green letters you couldn’t scrape away with your thumb—and worth two cents. The sun shone through the glass as I tilted the drink to my mouth. It tasted better than oranges, even the ones from Japan that came only at Christmas. There was always a kid who didn’t have a dime, who wanted a sip, so I spit in the bottle, watched the bubbles slide down the neck, float on the bright liquid surface before they dissolved, and no one would drink it then, no one but me.
spit, v. To eject saliva from the mouth by the special effect involved in expelling saliva. (1568, Ascham, Scholem. ii: Their whole knowledge... was tied onely to their tong & lips... and therefore was sone spitte out of the mouth againe.)
Five grade 1 girls played in the corner of the school grounds by the fence near the girls’ entrance, just past the wide granite steps. Away from the big kids, all in a row, we grasped the wire mesh with our mittened hands, spit on the snow and then slid our feet back and forth as fast as we could to make a patch of ice. If the teacher would let us in, we’d dash through the doors down the marble floor to the fountain and fill our mouths, then dart to the fence again and splat the water at our feet. Every recess with my friends I rode the ice, frenetic as a gerbil on a wheel, my caged body running nowhere on its own spit and me too young to know what that might mean.
spit, 1633 P. Fletcher. See how with streams of spit th’ art drencht.
“Come on,” she said, “do it!” I gathered the saliva above my tongue, pushed it to the front of my mouth, pursed my lips and forced it out. It fell in a long translucent string, dribbled down the cheek of the girl my friend held on the ground, though the girl squirmed and started to cry.
“Don’t be a baby,” my friend said to her. “Now you’re in the club, you’re one of us.”
spitter: One who spits. (1615, Crooke, Body of Man. Melancholy men are all of them... great spitters.)
My brother hawked on the ground when I walked with him—a shocking thing—that liquid, guttural sound, then a phhutt to the side, right where anyone could step in bare feet or fancy shoes. He was so proud to miss his chin and jacket, to leave his mark on the cement, a circle thin and shiny as a coin, and he wasn’t the only one. A chain of spit linked the squares of the sidewalk showing where the men had walked. My father and grandfather did it too, my grandfather’s saliva red from snoose. Mom told my brother it was disgusting, he had to stop. “What am I supposed to do?” he said. “Swallow it?”
spit, 1700, Floyer, Cold Baths. Temperate bathing... ripens the Spit and helps it up.
The kids on the block called him Drool Face. He was the older boy who lived in the house two doors down and who never went to school. We saw him only in the summer, when he sat by the back steps on a chrome kitchen chair, his mouth open, a thin stream from the corner of his lower lip running down his chin like it did in the dentist’s office until the assistant told you to spit into the bowl. Our mothers warned us to stay away from him, but one day, cutting across his yard, I came too close and he grabbed me, held me on his lap. I wasn’t scared, though I knew something wasn’t right. He didn’t try to rub me between the legs like the old man at the paddling pool who always brought his own towel and asked to dry us. He just held me on his lap, my back against his chest, my head tucked under his chin, my legs dangling. His pants were the thick green cotton grown men wore, and his shirt had metal snap buttons down the front. I could feel them press into my back. I was glad I was turned away, because his face was hard to look at—the slack mouth and wet chin, his eyes a soft hurt brown as if he knew what people said about him. I let myself go limp in his arms and listened to his breathing. It sounded like the panting of a sick cat who had crawled under the bed and wouldn’t come out. I wouldn’t tell anyone. “Wally,” I said, “you should let me go now,” then squirmed out of his hug and ran through his yard to my friends, the top of my head damp with drool.
spit: The act of spitting; an instance of this. 1658: Lovelace, Lucasta, Toad and Spider. The speckl’d Toad... Defies his foe with a fell Spit.
My friend’s brother, who was in grade 12 when I was in grade 10, took me aside at the Teen Town dance one Friday night. He was still as skinny as a little kid, and he wore a dumb-looking wool hat even though it was summer. There was something he had to tell me, but I had to promise not to get mad. It was a trick, he said, he and his friend Jimmy used to play on us. In winter they’d slobber on the branch of a tree. If it was cold enough, and they got the angle right, their saliva froze before it could hit the ground, forming a row of thin icicles. They’d wait for me and my friend to come up the alley on our way to school. “You were always giggling and chattering,” he said, “we could hear you half a block away.” He and Jimmy would act nice. They’d break the glass sticks from the branch and offer us the best ones, long and glittering in their hands. We’d lick the pointed ends and then put them in our mouths. Now I understood why the boys danced around us as we sucked the ice, why they laughed and punched each other in the arm, laughed so hard they doubled over and hugged themselves, hugged themselves to keep their secret from spilling out.
spit, sb., saliva, spittle; a clot of this. See also cuckoo-spit, frog spit.
The practical uses of human spit: To hold a kiss curl in place, to shine a shoe, to express disgust, to remove a smear of mascara, to lubricate, to seal an envelope, to slicken the lips for a photograph, to defog a scuba-diving mask, to test the hotness of an iron, to clear the throat, to turn a dull stone to jade, to determine the direction of the wind, to moisten a wad of gum or a plug of tobacco, to turn a page, to clean a face. “Wait,” she would say when I was halfway out the door. “Let me look at you.” Always she’d find something, lick her finger and rub at a spot on my cheek or chin. I’d wiggle free of her hands and walk from the house, marked with the snail-slide of my mother’s fingers, slick tattoos telling my tribe and lineage, my face shining with the signs she drew to place me in the world.