spit-take
n.— «Yet, “after all I’ve done, what I’m most remembered for is the spit- take.” That’s the point in Make Room for Daddy when [Danny] Thomas would be sipping coffee, somebody would say something surprising, and he would spit it out.» —“Thomas makes room in his schedule for ‘Nest’” by Jefferson Graham in Beverly Hills, California USA Today Feb. 1, 1991. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...
We use the term Milky Way for that glowing arc across the sky. But how people picture it varies from culture to culture. In Sweden, that starry band goes by a name that means “Winter Street,” and in Hawaii, a term for the Milky Way...