spit take

noun

variants or spit-take

ˈspit-ˌtāk 

plural spit takes or spit-takes

informal

: the act of spitting out one's drink in response to something funny or surprising especially for comedic effect

Whether you're grading on difficulty or execution, this spit take is nearly a perfect ten. [Stephen] Colbert maintains a perfect 25-degree angle-of-spew throughout the duration—nearly an entire second—while effortlessly hitting the kind of water throughput levels more commonly seen in aqueduct design than comedy sketches.

—Matthew Dessem

If this morning's news had you doing a spit take over your morning coffee, don't worry, Keurig Dr Pepper is happy to sell you another cup.

—Brad Avery

When his name is announced as a best director nominee, Tarantino performs an epic spit-take, proving that the wanton spraying of bodily fluids is a personal proclivity as well as a cinematic one.

—Thrillist Entertainment

College prices have long provoked headshaking, but in recent years they've been more likely to cause a spit-take.

—Michael Rubiner

Examples of spit take in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

No one gave him a hard time; no one did a spit take when the elevator doors opened. —Ashley Fetters Maloy, Washington Post, 5 July 2024

Buy Now Essential Reading for Pride: PEOPLE Picks Our Favorite LGBTQ+ Books For Adults 13 of 20 'Happy-Go-Lucky' by David Sedaris David Sedaris is one of our greatest living essayists, and never fails to elicit both spit takes and tears, sometimes both at the same time. —Lizz Schumer, Peoplemag, 29 June 2024

Los Angeles Times Here’s a story ripe for a spit take: Water systems in California and across the U.S. are vulnerable to both physical and cyber attacks. —Ryan Fonseca, Los Angeles Times, 9 May 2023

Social media treated it like the Zapruder film, as users dissected and looked at different angles of the video and offered their own – ahem – spit take. —Morgan Hines, USA TODAY, 1 Mar. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1971, in the meaning defined above