spit [OE] The root of the Old English word spit imitated the sound of someone spitting out saliva from their mouth. Spit in the sense of spit-roast is from another Old English word meaning ‘thin, pointed rod’, and the spit of land [L17th] came from this. When we notice that someone looks exactly like someone else we can say that they are the spit of or the spitting image of the other person. This last phrase is an altered form of an earlier version, spit and image, early examples of which, from the 1600s, describe a man as being so like another that he could have been spat out of the latter’s mouth. Easier to explain is the expression spit and sawdust, used to describe an old-fashioned or unpretentious pub. This recalls the former practice of sprinkling the floor of the pub with a layer of sawdust, to soak up spillages in general and customers’ spit in particular. Spout [ME] shares a root.