[f. SPURT v.1 (cf. SPIRT sb.4), and perhaps partly from SPURT sb. 3 b.]
1. A stream or shower of water, etc., ejected or thrown up with some force and suddenness.
1775. Ash, Spurt, a sudden stream.
1828–32. Webster, Spurt, a sudden or violent ejection or gushing of a liquid substance from a tube, orifice, or other confined place.
1868. Morris, Earthly Paradise (1870), I. I. 111. Then from light feet a spurt of dust there sprang.
1871. Rossetti, Poems, Dante at Verona, xxviii. The conduits round the gardens sing … Where wearied damsels rest and hold Their hands in the wet spurt of gold.
1877. Black, Green Past., xxxviii. As the Esquimaux began to receive shooting spurts of spray from the rocks overhead.
fig. 1864. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., XVI. xii. IV. 443. Thrice-private Œuvre de Poésies, in which are satirical spurts affecting more than one crowned head.
transf. 1881. Ruskin, Bible of Amiens, ii. § 25. The rocks all the way from Rhine, thus far, are jets and spurts of basalt through irony sandstone.
1890. Times, 17 May, 13/3. An adaptation of the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet to flashes of light and spurts of sound.
b. A spatter or splash made by a pen.
1871. G. Stephens, in Archaeologia, XLIII. 101. The spurts have been taken away in my woodcut.
2. A sudden outbreak or outburst of feeling, action, etc.
In this sense freq. suggestive of SPURT sb.1 2.
1859. Tennyson, Merlin & V., 374. A sudden spurt of woman’s jealousy.
1879. Froude, Cæsar, ix. 104. A spurt of insurrectionary fire had broken out in Italy.
1880. Miss Braddon, Just as I am, xix. Little spurts of angry feeling flashed out of her now and then in her talk.
