cough and a spit

noun

A minor role.

Ask AI about this wordChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

Meanings

nouna cough and a spit
  1. broadcastingA minor role.

    Everybody gargling madly and mugging up their lines as though Shakespeare himself was out front. Don't know why I bothered, I only had a cough and a spit.

    1998, Ken Whitmore, Alfred Bradley, The Final Twist: A Play, page 20
    1 more example

    Ray Wise managed his back-to-black-hair role before joining Tim Robbins in Bob Roberts and James Marshall squeezed in his cough and a spit between Gladiator and joining the big boys (Nicholson, Cruise) in A Few Good Men […]

    1992, Film Review, page 6
  2. UKcolloquialA very short distance.

    […] Stockwell, a cough and a spit from Vauxhall Cross.

    2013, Russell Cruse, The Rothko Room, page 258
    1 more example

    […] a Lancaster squadron at Bawne, west of Cambridge — it sits a cough and a spit from the Bedfordshire border.

    2009, David Fiddimore, The Forgotten War, page 5
Cite this entry
APA

cough and a spit. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cough%20and%20a%20spit

MLA

“cough and a spit.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cough%20and%20a%20spit. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cough and a spit,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cough%20and%20a%20spit.

Source: cough and a spit on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.