sputtering

Verb

sputter (third-person singular simple present sputters, present participle sputtering, simple past and past participle sputtered)

1. (intransitive) To emit saliva or spit from the mouth in small, scattered portions, as in rapid speaking.
   • The child [...] kicked, and crowed, and sputtered, when his mother took him, and put up his little fingers to clutch her hair, and was to her as a young god upon the earth. Nothing in the world had ever been created so beautiful, so joyous, so satisfactory, so divine!1869 May, Anthony Trollope, “Lady Milborough as Ambassador”, in He Knew He Was Right, volume I, London: Strahan and Company, […], →OCLC, page 87
2. (ambitransitive) To speak so rapidly as to emit saliva; to utter words hastily and indistinctly, with a spluttering sound, as in rage.
   • They could neither of them speak their rage, and so fell a sputtering at one another, like two roasting apples.1700, William Congreve, The Way of the World
3. (ambitransitive) To throw out anything, as little jets of steam, with a noise like that made by one sputtering.
   • Like the green wood [...] sputtering in the flame.1692, John Dryden, Cleomenes, the Spartan Hero, a Tragedy

   Synonyms:

   stutter

4. (intransitive) To cause surface atoms or electrons of a solid to be ejected by bombarding it with heavy atoms or ions.
5. (transitive) To coat the surface of an object by sputtering.

See all 7 meanings of sputter