expectorate

From Latin expectorātus, past participle of expectorō (“(only figurative) banish from the mind; (post-classical) expel from the breast)”), from ex (“out of”) + pectus (“the breast”).

• IPA^(key): /ɪkˈspɛktəɹeɪt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

expectorate (third-person singular simple present expectorates, present participle expectorating, simple past and past participle expectorated)

1. (ambitransitive) To cough up fluid from the lungs.
   • 1893, Popular Science Monthly (ed.), Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 42 (Jan 1893) — Notes‎^[1]:

     These rules are equally applicable to pneumonia and perhaps also to bronchitis. It will, therefore, be best to call them, not rules for consumptives, but for all persons who cough and expectorate .

   • 1876, Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Chapter VI)‎^[2]:

     …the gap in his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable way.

2. (ambitransitive) To spit.

• expectorant
• expectoration

• sputum

• “expectorate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “expectorate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “expectorate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

expectorate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of expectorar combined with te