How to Use spat in a Sentence

spat

1 of 2 noun
  • That spat didn’t cost Slot his job.
    — James Pearce, New York Times, 1 June 2026
  • His skin toughened against the acidic pulp that the plant spat when cleaved.
    — Tucker Harris, Washington Post, 23 Jan. 2024
  • They were denied service, kicked, spat on and called racial slurs.
    — Nicquel Terry Ellis, CNN, 29 Aug. 2023
  • An angry mob of white adults hurled slurs and spat on the high schoolers.
    — Daniel Felsenthal, Pitchfork, 4 Apr. 2026
  • Shanahan brushed off the sideline spat.
    — Jerry McDonald, Mercury News, 13 Oct. 2025
  • Then there are the legal spats cropping up across the country.
    — Terry Collins, USA Today, 25 Feb. 2026
  • Nowhere have such spats been more ironic than in Vance’s rebuke of the pope.
    — Matthew Smith, The Conversation, 8 June 2026
  • This year’s spat set is no guarantee that next year’s will be anywhere as good.
    — Baltimore Sun Editorial Board, Baltimore Sun, 17 Jan. 2024
  • That sideline spat in the NFC wild-card loss?
    — Brooks Kubena, New York Times, 1 June 2026
  • Kizer – their father – was on the phone with her and overheard parts of the spat.
    — Meredith Colias-Pete, Chicago Tribune, 24 Feb. 2026
  • Kizer – their father – was on the phone with her and overheard parts of the spat.
    — Meredith Colias-Pete, Chicago Tribune, 2 Sep. 2025
  • While Weed was on the ground, the 16-year-old spat on him, the release reads.
    — Mary Grace Keller, baltimoresun.com/maryland/carroll, 12 Aug. 2020
  • But the tensions run deeper than a social media spat.
    — Hadas Gold, CNN Money, 6 Feb. 2026
  • Rare earths are something that China used some years ago in a spat with Japan.
    — Kerry Brown, Time, 31 Oct. 2025
  • Jones is even avoiding any public spats with players and agents in contract talks.
    — Dallas Morning News, 27 Feb. 2026
  • But both react in the exact same way to a minor spat over exiting a spot.
    — Alison Herman, Variety, 4 Apr. 2023
  • Don’t dismiss the consequences of last week’s flash-in-the-pan culture spat.
    — Ketan Joshi, The New Republic, 18 Jan. 2023
  • China and Japan have been locked in a diplomatic spat that could come at a heavy cost to both sides.
    — Miranda Jeyaretnam, Time, 24 Nov. 2025
  • The fast-food behemoth denied that the video was related to the spat.
    — Matt Lavietes, NBC news, 4 Mar. 2026
  • For Musk, the spat risked a backlash with a whole different set of consumers.
    — Jeremy Lott, The Washington Examiner, 14 Nov. 2025
  • Further, most float escorts are required to wear spats over their shoes, so bulky footwear wouldn't fit beneath them.
    — Skyler Caruso, PEOPLE, 27 Nov. 2025
  • Yes, without a doubt, the recent spat of flagrant fouls is concerning.
    — Zach Osterman, The Indianapolis Star, 20 Jan. 2024
  • But if your relatives were spread over 67 acres, those spats may be minimized.
    — Tori Latham, Robb Report, 29 June 2023
  • In other words, the spat wasn’t merely about sales or creativity.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 26 June 2026
  • The spat from earlier this year looks mild by comparison.
    — Matteo Wong, The Atlantic, 27 Apr. 2026
  • Judy gives a large share of the credit for the 2023 spat set to drought conditions.
    — Baltimore Sun Editorial Board, Baltimore Sun, 17 Jan. 2024
  • Did Corey Seager and Marcus Semien have a spat?
    — Evan Grant, Dallas Morning News, 6 Feb. 2026
  • Two of social media’s biggest stars are taking their spat to the court of public opinion.
    — Rebecca Cohen, NBC news, 16 Apr. 2026
  • Like spats or wingtip collars, the valet stand feels like a relic from an earlier, more elegant age.
    — Eric Twardzik, Robb Report, 17 Oct. 2023
  • The two had small spats here and there early on, mostly about communication style.
    — Sam Reed, Glamour, 22 Oct. 2025

spat

2 of 2 verb
  • They were typical sisters, spatting one minute, playing together the next.
  • He is alleged to have called a Jewish man a slur, threatened to kill him and spat on him.
    — NBC News, 3 Mar. 2022
  • The driver screamed the n-word continually at her and one of the passengers spat on her and her car.
    — Selena Barrientos, Good Housekeeping, 21 July 2020
  • Capitalism devoured America from the inside out and then spat out the bones.
    — Sarah Jones, Vulture, 25 Mar. 2021
  • But in the process of escalating it from thousands of spat at a time to hundreds of thousands spat at a time to millions of spat at a time, this is a big step.
    — Lawrence Specker | [email protected], al, 2 June 2023
  • South Carolina was on the east bank and Georgia on the west; the temperature was in the fifties, and gray clouds spat water in our faces.
    — Matthew Hutson, The New Yorker, 21 July 2023
  • Beyoncé just as effectively snarled and spat, working her voice into a throaty rasp or frantic lather that implied serious consequences for challengers and haters.
    — Bob Gendron, Chicago Tribune, 23 July 2023
  • Burst pipes spat more than 4 feet of water into the Hall’s boiler room, with flooding and humidity causing damage throughout the building, and to the priceless historical documents within.
    — Mark Lamster, Dallas News, 8 Mar. 2021
  • Mulroney, Ackerman, Snow, and Newman turn this story of spatting WAGS into an explosive, addictive watch.
    — Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 11 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'spat.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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