[f. SPIT v.2]

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  1.  One who spits or ejects saliva. Also fig.

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1382.  Wyclif, Isaiah l. 6. My face I turnede not awei fro the blameres, and the spitteres in me.

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1615.  Crooke, Body of Man, 186. Melancholy men are all of them … great Spitters.

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1707.  Floyer, Physic. Pulse-Watch, 239. The Splenetics are great Spitters.

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1750.  H. Walpole, Lett. to Mann (1833), II. 344. He would not see them, but wrote to the Spitter (or as he is now called, Lord Gob’em,) to say, that he had affronted him very grossly before company.

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1869.  J. G. Wood, Bible Anim., 554. Buxtorf, however, explains the word [’akshūb, adder] as the Spitter.

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  † 2.  A pea-shooter. Obs.–1

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1688.  R. Holme, Armoury, III. xvi. (Roxb.), 82/1. Shooting in [= with] a trunk staffer [sic] or spitter.

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