Spit, spitted, spat

Here's everything you always wanted to know about spit, but were afraid to ask:

"Spitting your bodily fluids at someone is seen as more offensive than hitting them," Ross Coomber, a British sociologist who has written on the meaning of spit, told the Guardian back in 2003. "It's obviously a form of violence, very confrontational."

Hawking a loogie, spewing, spluttering or whatever you want to call it is very human. And inhuman. Getting slimed by someone else's effluence is downright humiliating.

Read the whole thing for more on the role of spit in language, sports, and art restoration.