[f. SPIT v.2]
1. That spits, in various (chiefly transf.) senses of the verb.
1567. Drant, Horace, Ep., E ij. A linnine slop in spitting snowe.
1687. Miége, Gt. Fr. Dict., I. Cracheur, a spitting (or spawling) man.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. xxvii. 211. The spitting snow-dust raised by the wind.
1888. Churchward, Blackbirding, 81. I saw the spitting flashes and heard the bangs.
1901. ‘Linesman,’ Words by Eyewitness, xii. (1902), 252. There is a roar from the razor-back, an angry spitting reply from the donga.
2. In specific names of reptiles, etc., as spitting asp, click-beetle, gecko, snake.
1653. Rowland, Topsell’s Serpents, 653. The Ptyas or spitting [1608 spetting] Asp resembleth an Ash colour.
1802. Shaw, Gen. Zool., III. I. 279. Spitting Gecko. Lacerta Sputator.
1855. Morton, Cycl. Agric., I. 47. A[griotes] sputator.—The pasture or spitting click-beetle is much smaller than A. obscurus.
1887. Encycl. Brit., XXII. 197/1. One [genus], Sepedon hæmachates,… or ‘Ring-Neck Snake,’… shares with the cobra a third Dutch name, that of ‘spuw slang’ (Spitting Snake).
