Other forms: sputtering, sputtered, sputters
To sputter is to make a series of soft spitting sounds. The engine sputtered, sputtering candle, sputter and die.
It belongs to fire and engines and to speech that breaks up under emotion, and it usually means something is failing. In physics, sputtering is a way of coating surfaces by knocking atoms off a target. Note spout and spit nearby.
1verbsputterTo make a series of soft spitting sounds.
“The candle sputtered and went out as the wind blew through the window.”
sputter is a sound.
A frequentative of an old verb related to spout and spit, made from the sound.
Middle English
*sputren
English, today
sputter
Probably representing Middle English sputren, sputrien, a frequentative form of Middle English sputen (“to spout, vomit”), equivalent to spout + er. Cognate with stq spüttern (“to inject, spray, splash”), West Frisian sputterje (“to sputter”), Dutch sputteren (“to sputter”), Low German sputtern, spruttern (“to sprinkle”), German sprudeln (“to spout, squirt”). Compare splutter.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA