[f. SPUTTER v.]
1. Noisy or violent and confused speech or discourse; angry, excited or fussy argument or protest; fuss, clamor; = SPLUTTER sb. 1 b.
1673. Wycherley, Gentl. Dancing-Master, V. i. All the sputter I made was but to make this young man … believe … that it was not with my connivance or consent.
1676. Marvell, Mr. Smirke, 40. But he must make some sputter rather then be held to the terms of the Question.
1706. Baynard, Cold Baths, II. 275. Z[oun]ds it will kill you (quoth he in Sputter and Passion).
1721. Steele, Conscious Lovers, IV. iii. What a deal of pother and sputter here is between my mistress and Mr. Myrtle from mere punctilio.
1760–72. H. Brooke, Fool of Qual. (1809), III. 35. Weak or vapid tempers … boil over in … factious sputter and turbulence.
1812. D’Israeli, Calam. Auth. (1867), 9. He has … chronicled his suppressed feelings … with all the flame and sputter of his strong prejudices.
1884. Chr. Commonw., 23 Oct., 20/3. What is there left when the chaff of sputter and jangle of platitude and puerility has been sifted away?
b. An instance or occasion of this. rare.
1692. Wagstaffe, Vind. Carolinæ, vi. 64. [He] makes such a Sputter about the old Law.
1721. Wodrow, Ch. Hist. (1828), I. 340/1. [They] made a terrible sputter against private meetings and societies for prayer.
c. A state of bustling confusion or excitement.
1823. in Spirit Publ. Jrnls., 150. He will live in a sputter, And die in a gutter.
a. 1898. in Eng. Dial. Dict., s.v., In a sputter, in a fuss.
2. Matter ejected in or by sputtering. rare.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1768), V. xxxi. 290. She pouted out her blubber-lips, as if to bellows up wind and sputter into her horse-nostrils.
1818. Todd, Sputter, moisture thrown out in small drops.
3. The action or an act of sputtering; the emission of small particles with some amount of explosive sound; the sound characteristic of or accompanying this. Freq. fig. or in fig. context.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., I. III. v. It is a quite new kind of contest this with the Parlement: no transitory sputter, as from collision of hard bodies.
1845. Alb. Smith, Fort. Scattergood Fam., xxx. (1887), 97. Nothing breaking the silence but the occasional sputter of the rushlight.
1894. Rev. of Reviews, April, 403/1. The peaceful partition of Africa … is evidently going to be carried out amid a constant sputter of little wars.
b. A spattering or sprinkling.
1887. Ruskin, Præterita, II. 150. But, outside the ramparts, no more poor. A sputter, perhaps,… along the Savoy road.
