What does "spittoon" mean?

A receptacle for spit (saliva); especially, one used by people using chewing tobacco or snuff.

What is a synonym for "spittoon"?

Common synonyms include: cuspidor, cuspidor, goboon, pigdan, pot, spit bucket.

//spɪˈtuːn// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A receptacle for spit (saliva); especially, one used by people using chewing tobacco or snuff.
"In the only arm-chair which the apartment boasted—one of the legs of which was shorter than the other three, and to remedy that defect was ingeniously stuck into an iron spittoon—sat the young man Mr. Pascoe had come to visit, very unlike, it must be confessed, any "portraits of a gentleman" one ever saw in the exhibition of the Royal Academy."
2
a receptacle for spit (usually in a public place) wordnet

"If you don't blow your own horn, someone else will use it as a spittoon."

From spit + -oon.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.