a. Also 7–8 spewey. [f. SPEW v.1 + -Y.]
1. Of ground: Tending to excessive wetness; from which water rises or oozes out. Chiefly Agric.
1669. Worlidge, Syst. Agric., iii. § 3. 22. Where the ground is moist, cold, clay, spewy, rushy or mossie.
1721. Mortimer, Husb. (ed. 3), I. 110. The place was cover’d with a scurf of wet spewy Earth about a Foot thick.
1733. Tull, Horse-Hoeing Husb., xviii. 251. Hills are made wet and spewy by the Rain-water which falls thereon, and soaks into them as into other Land.
1821. Cobbett, Rural Rides (1853), 49. A nasty spewy black gravel on the top of a sour clay.
1849. Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc., X. II. 437. The wet ‘spewy’ pastures of the Cotswold Hills.
1879. Miss Braddon, Vixen, xxvii. They … splashed through a good deal of spewy ground.
b. transf. Of literary style: Sloppy, slovenly.
1829. [H. Best], Personal & Lit. Mem., 171. The main cause of the puffy, spungy, spewy, washy style that prevails at the present day.
2. Frothy, effervescent. rare–1.
1743. Lond. & Country Brewer, IV. (ed. 2), 279. Whereby any such spewy, creamy Head or Ferments, is entirely kept off.
