squirt
Verbsquirts, squirting, squirted
Noun pluralsquirts
Formssquirts, squirting, squirted
Pluralsquirts
- 1To force a liquid out through a narrow opening in a rapid stream.
Squirt a little dish soap into the pan and let it soak overnight.
The mechanic squirted oil into the squeaky hinge until it swung freely.
Note
Whoever does the squirting is the subject now, and the liquid is the object, with its destination after a preposition. In Walter Scott's Guy Mannering (1815), a miscreant rolls his tobacco in his cheek and squirts the juice into the fire grate. Reverse the roles, putting the target as object and the liquid after with (squirt the target with water), and you have the "hit with a stream" meaning.
- 2Of a liquid, to be forced out through a narrow opening in a rapid stream.
Hot fat can squirt from sausages when you bite into them.
Ink squirted across the page when the old fountain pen cracked.
Similarspurt, spray, jet, spout
Note
The liquid is the subject and moves on its own, so the verb usually comes with a phrase of direction: it squirts from a tube, over someone, across a page. Thick stuff qualifies as well as thin, since toothpaste squirts too. In Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Werewolves (1865), servants "let the blood squirt over him." Give the verb an object and it becomes the causative use.
- 3
- 4
- 5A small child.
Hey, squirt, does your mom know you're out here by yourself?
When I was a squirt, my grandfather let me sit on his lap and steer the tractor.
Similarkid, tot, kiddo, youngster
Note
Older children and adults use it for a youngster, very often straight to the child's face as a teasing nickname. The slang travels well: it is used in the UK, Ireland, the US, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. Small is relative, too. Alethea Helbig and Agnes Perkins's Dictionary of American Children's Fiction (1986) calls Gumbo, a twelve-year-old in Cutlass Island, the "town squirt."
- 6An annoyingly pretentious person, especially a young, inexperienced one who acts more important than they are.
Some squirt from the head office showed up to explain our own jobs to us.
He dismissed his younger critics as squirts who had never published a novel.
Similarupstart, whippersnapper, pipsqueak, twerp
Note
Contempt does the work: the word sneers at someone young, unproven and pleased with themselves, where the word for a small child is usually fond. It can even stand before a noun like an adjective. In All the King's Men (1946), Robert Penn Warren describes a man with a camera round his neck and "a grin on his squirt face." It is slang with a sting, best kept out of formal writing.
- 7An instrument that forcefully shoots out a liquid in a small, quick stream.
The mechanic reached into the engine with a long-nosed squirt full of oil.
The nurse kept a rubber squirt beside the sink for rinsing out wounds.
Similarsyringe
Note
The tool that does the squirting has a name that probably imitates the sound of what it does: Middle English squirten, akin to swirl, with relatives such as Low German swirtjen "to squirt," Icelandic skvetta and Norwegian skvette. It need not be elaborate. In James George Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890), Karo-Batak men of Sumatra carry bamboo squirts through a week-long rain-making ceremony.
- 8
- 9Of a female, to ejaculate, releasing fluid during sexual arousal or orgasm.
On the podcast, a sex educator talked about why some women squirt and others don't.
She thought something was wrong the first time she squirted, until she read up on it.
Note
Nothing follows the verb, and the subject is the woman herself. Sonia Borg's Oral Sex She'll Never Forget (2010) writes of "women who squirt." That separates it from the plain intransitive sense, where the liquid is what squirts. It is vulgar slang and carries the same warning as the noun for the fluid.
- 10The fluid a female releases when she ejaculates during sexual arousal or orgasm.
On the forum, women compared notes on how much squirt they produce and when.
Some couples lay a waterproof blanket on the bed to keep squirt off the mattress.
Note
This is vulgar slang, at home in frank talk about sex and out of place in polite or clinical writing, where female ejaculate is the neutral term. It is a mass noun with no plural. Put an article in front and a squirt usually means a small stream of liquid instead.
- 11
- 12
- 13To throw out or utter words rapidly, chattering foolishly.
At every meeting he would squirt his half-formed opinions at the room before anyone else could speak.
he'll be ready to squirt his Wits at his own Shadow
1692, Roger L’Estrange, FablesNote
Talk is pictured as liquid: words fired off fast and with little aim, the way the liquid sense fires a jet. Roger L'Estrange, in 1692, imagines a man "ready to squirt his Wits at his own Shadow," the wits being what spurts out. The sense is obsolete, so readers will hear any modern use as a deliberate revival.
- 14A kayaking maneuver in which the boat is forced into a nearly vertical position.
- 15To maneuver forcefully against the current so that a kayak is pushed onto one end, nearly vertical.
- 16In hydrodynamics, the whole system of flow in the region surrounding a source.
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Origin
From Middle English squirten (also squyrten), of uncertain origin but probably onomatopoeic. It is akin to swirl and can be compared with Low German swirtjen ("to squirt"), Swedish onomatopoeic words for water such as skvala, skvalp, skvimpa, and skvätta, Icelandic skvetta, and Norwegian skvette.