Other forms: spluttering
To splutter is to speak in a spitting, broken way because of shock or because of water. The words and the air come out together.
It suits outrage above all, so somebody spluttering with indignation is too angry to finish a sentence, and the word makes them faintly ridiculous, which is usually the writer's intention. Engines splutter when they misfire and candles splutter in a draught. American English writes sputter. The word is imitative, built directly from the sound it names.
The noun is imitative of the sound. The verb is derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 1 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word