spuere

Spuere is a classical Latin verb meaning to spit or to eject saliva or other matter from the mouth. It occurs in both prose and poetry and is used in medical, descriptive, and narrative contexts to record the act of expelling substances from the mouth. The verb can carry literal sense and, in some expressions, convey imagery of rejection or contempt.

Grammatically, spuere belongs to the second conjugation of Latin verbs. The principal parts are spueō, spuere, spuī, spūtum, which provide the bases for the tense system of the verb. In ordinary usage the forms follow the standard -ēre paradigm of the second conjugation; for example, the present indicative third person singular is spuit, meaning “he spits.” Other tenses are formed through the usual suffixes, and the supine is typically spūtum. The passive voice exists but is comparatively uncommon in everyday Latin texts.

Etymology and related forms center on a Proto-Italic root *spū-, linked to the noun spūtum, meaning spittle. This root also informs related vocabulary in Latin and the broader Romance and medical lexicon. The term has left a visible imprint in modern medical vocabulary through the Latin noun spūtum, which yields the English word sputum. Spuere is primarily of scholarly interest today, showing how a simple bodily action was encoded in classical Latin and carried into later technical language.