spat

verb

1. (form-of, participle, past)simple past and past participle of spit

   “There was no sink in the room so we spat out the window.”

   “If I had known you had a spittoon in the corner I would never have spat on the floor.”

2. (ambitransitive)To spawn, used of shellfish as above.
3. (intransitive)To quarrel or argue pettily briefly.
4. (intransitive, transitive)To strike with a spattering sound.

   “He felt the wind of a second bullet that spatted against a boulder near Barney.”

   “"She mentioned she had spatted Kelsey on her diaper with a hairbrush," said Mildred Johnson, a co-worker.”

5. (US, dialectal)To slap, as with the open hand; to clap together, as the hands.

   “Little Isabel leaped up and down, spatting her hands.”

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The spawn of shellfish, especially oysters and similar molluscs.

   “As spat-fall often occurs in areas away from environments suitable for oyster growing, the collection, transport and sale of oyster spat has developed into a separate industry.”

   “But Orata’s oysters were, like the dormice and fish, collected in the wild, as spat.”

2. (countable, uncountable)A juvenile shellfish which has attached to a hard surface.

   “Conditions in pearl oyster hatcheries are optimized for growth and survival of spat.”

   “If the spat are allowed to remain attached to the tank bottom for more than two days, they are difficult to remove without damage to the shell.”

3. (in-plural, often)A covering or decorative covering worn over a shoe.
4. (Australia, UK)A piece of bodywork that covers the upper portions of the rear tyres of a car.
5. A drag-reducing aerodynamic fairing covering the upper portions of the tyres of an aeroplane equipped with non-retractable landing gear.
6. A brief argument, falling out, quarrel.

   “get into a trivial spat over punctuality”

   “have a vicious spat with the cousins”

   “The downside of this cost-saving strategy was that the train service could only be covered by goodwill. Whenever there was a spat between ASLEF and management - regardless of cause - the withdrawal of this goodwill became a stick with which unions could beat management.”

7. A light blow with something flat.
8. An obsolete unit of distance in astronomy (symbol S), equal to one billion kilometres.