Definition of "sputum"

sputum

noun
countable and uncountable, plural sputums or sputa
1. (physiology) Matter coughed up and expectorated from the mouth, composed of saliva and discharges from the respiratory passages such as mucus, phlegm or pus.
  Quotations
  In the early 1890s the work in the laboratory consisted of postmortems, urinalyses, and examination of sputums.
  2018, Louis Rosenfeld, Four Centuries of Clinical Chemistry
  At the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the boy’s sputum sat for a month, waiting for its turn in a slow process of antibody-matching analysis.
  2020 February 24, James Hamblin, “You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus”, in The Atlantic‎