The story
From the resemblance of the noise to the sound of hot fat sputtering in a skillet.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
vocal fry
Today it means: A low creaky vocal vibration caused by rapid vibration of the vocal chords, common in some languages such as Finnish. In English, often associated with older Received Pronunciation and more recent North American speech patterns. Full definition →