spit take
n.— «Nor does he think the public can muster a chuckle for “Danny Thomas doing spit takes. We’re too jaded now.”» —“Success of two new comedies depends on Hanks” by Joan E. Vadeboncoeur Syracuse Herald-Journal (New York) July 18, 1985. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...