I've Got a Secretion: The Sociology of Spitting

Sometimes in reports, she adds, saliva is referred to as "a mild enzymatic solution." Spit is just too gross.

Most spit, however, is unacceptable: A spitball is illegal in baseball. In London, according to the Evening Standard, spitting on bus operators is so prevalent that drivers carry a kit that allows them to give a DNA sample to police. Last spring a teenage spitter was nailed using a national DNA database. In Singapore, spitting in public is considered most offensive and is punishable by a fine.

But in America, people are allowed to spit most places. Just not at each other.

Spit, which the dictionary says is originally onomatopoeic, is an essential element in the English language: Washington is spitting distance from Baltimore, especially when the Redskins play the Ravens. At certain angles, Sen. George Allen of Virginia is practically the spit and image of his father, George Allen Sr., who once coached the Redskins.

Sen. Allen knows from spitting. He still likes to put a little dip of Copenhagen tobacco between his lower lip and gum. He spits the muddy results into a paper cup. "He uses very little of it," says David Snepp, Allen's press secretary.

Spitting in Washington has a colorful history. John Nance Garner, vice president under Franklin Roosevelt, was euphemistically quoted as saying: "The vice presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm spit."

And Charles Dickens, visiting in 1842, was astonished at the number of spittoons in town. From his travelogue: "As Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to become anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and disagreeable."

He might have called his Washington chapter "Great Expectorations."