sputter

1. 1.

   the noise of something spattering or sputtering explosively

   “he heard a spatter of gunfire”

   Synonymsspatterspatteringsplattersplatteringspluttersputtering

   Broadernoise
2. 2.

   an utterance (of words) with spitting sounds (as in rage)

   Synonymssplutter

   Broaderutterance

Other forms of sputter

plural

sputters·

past tense

sputterred·

present participle

sputterring·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about sputter

What does sputter mean?

sputter means "make an explosive sound". That is the primary sense; the word has 7 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in sputter?

sputter has 2 syllables: sput-ter. The stress falls on "sput". In IPA it is /ˈspʌtɚ/.

What is another word for sputter?

Close synonyms include clamber, scramble, shin, shinny, skin. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is sputter a common word?

sputter is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.