sputum
noun/ˈspjutəm/
Etymology From New Latin, from Latin sputum (“that which is spit out, spittle”), from spuere (“to spit”).
1
Medicine, Pulmonology, Sciences Matter coughed up and expectorated from the mouth, composed of saliva and discharges from the respiratory passages such as mucus, phlegm or pus.
- In the early 1890s the work in the laboratory consisted of postmortems, urinalyses, and examination of sputums.2018, Louis Rosenfeld, Four Centuries of Clinical Chemistry:
- At the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the boy’s sputum sat for a month, waiting for its turn in a slow process of antibody-matching analysis.2020 February 24, James Hamblin, “You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus”, in The Atlantic:
- Derived terms
- hemosputum