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Glite Dictionary
🤮 To vomit a little 💸 To give unwillingly
to spit up

to spit up

1 4.1
To push food, milk, or phlegm out of the mouth
  • phrasal verb
  • /spɪt ʌp/
translation icon : vomitar
  • She's been spitting up since morning.
  • a baby spits up
  • spits up blood

And here we we see him in his bed, coughing, spitting up blood, dying.

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Examples

  • He's spitting up blood now.

    Rocky (1976)

  • A few weeks later, he returned to the hospital, spitting up blood after the accident.

  • Nora started spitting up blood again this morning.

    Reds (1981)

  • She took the baby, who just then spat up.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • And here we we see him in his bed, coughing, spitting up blood, dying.

    Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy

  • Tom-Tom had colic, and he spit up his milk and cried all the time.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • Leonard spits up blood.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • After you find something you can wear out of the house that doesn't have spit-up on it, the baby has woken from her nap, and you change because she spit up on you again.

    Blog text (31)

  • The baby spit up on his mother after eating too quickly.

  • She noticed that her little brother often spit up after feeding.

Synonyms

to spit out
vsto spit up
94 2.3

To push food or drink out of your mouth

limits this action to fluids from lungs or throat, not general objects
to cough up
vsto spit up
8 4.6

To bring mucus or blood up from the lungs into the mouth

is general forceful expelling from lungs or throat, not only by coughing
to spew
vsto spit up
  • Informal
1 6.5

To spit out saliva, phlegm, or mucus from your mouth

typically expels from lungs or throat rather than only from the mouth
to expectorate
vsto spit up
  • Specialized
1 9.9

To cough up and spit out mucus from the throat or lungs

typically involves forceful expelling from lungs or throat, not only coughing
to cough out
vsto spit up
1 4.1

To force mucus out of the lungs through the mouth

focuses on forceful expelling from lungs or throat without naming coughing
to spue
vsto spit up
  • NSFW
1 9.9

To force something out of the mouth, like saliva or vomit

focuses on fluids from the lungs or throat, not stomach contents

Antonyms

to swallow
295 1.0

To make food or drink move from the mouth into the stomach

How Forceful

to spit up
1 4.1
to cough up
8 4.6
to cough
254 1.0

Surface Forms

spit up infinitive
spitting up present participle
spits up third person singular
spat up past
spat up past participle

Morphology

spit + up

The meaning is directly derivable from 'spit' (to eject saliva or mouth contents) combined with the directional/particle 'up' indicating outward/upward expulsion, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer the action. This verb + particle composition is a common, largely literal pattern (with only minor usage nuances such as infant regurgitation), making the expression transparently interpretable.

Etymology

Spit up is a very literal picture: spit means to push saliva or milk out and up shows the motion out of the mouth. So, spit up means 'to force liquid, mucus, or milk out of the mouth', like when a baby spits up after feeding.