How to Use sputum in a Sentence

sputum

noun
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  • Their faces soon wear a bluish cast; a distressing cough brings up the blood stained sputum.
    — Gina Kolata, New York Times, 10 Mar. 2020
  • So does weeks of coughing up sputum (a mix of mucus and saliva).
    — Korin Miller, SELF, 7 Apr. 2018
  • Testing consists of nose and mouth swabs and collecting sputum, and takes less than a minute.
    — Jun Michael Park, National Geographic, 3 July 2020
  • The samples can be swabs of the nose or mouth and what is called sputum, which is saliva and mucus from the respiratory tract.
    — cleveland, 12 Mar. 2020
  • Common symptoms include a bad cough lasting longer than 3 weeks, chest pain, and coughing up blood or sputum.
    — Brett Molina, USA TODAY, 6 July 2018
  • Phlegm discharged by coughing or spitting is called sputum.
    — Jack Feerick, Discover Magazine, 10 Nov. 2020
  • Symptoms include a bad cough lasting for longer than three weeks, pain in the chest, coughing up blood or sputum, fatigue, loss of weight, loss of appetite, chills, fever and sweating at night.
    — Taylor Pettaway, San Antonio Express-News, 9 Dec. 2022
  • Frothy pink sputum accompanied by shortness of breath is a sign of pulmonary edema; blood and fluid leak from the alveoli into the lungs.
    — Jack Feerick, Discover Magazine, 10 Nov. 2020
  • One study in Germany looked at nine mild cases and found that live viruses could not be grown from throat swabs or sputum samples eight days after symptoms started.
    — Lois Parshley, National Geographic, 3 June 2020
  • The disease usually attacks the lungs—resulting in coughing, bloody sputum, fevers, chills.
    — David Treuer, The New York Review of Books, 6 July 2020
  • People can also provide both spit and sputum samples as backups.
    — Alice Park, Time, 18 Mar. 2020
  • Collection and analysis of their sputum did yield, however, the parasitic eggs that provided an end to the mystery.
    — Rebecca Kreston, Discover Magazine, 27 Dec. 2014
  • But now, experts know that the bacteria live in thick mucus called sputum in a person’s lower respiratory system—the lower throat and lungs.
    — Theresa MacHemer, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Feb. 2020
  • Technicians can ask a patient to cough up phlegm, known as sputum, but doing so substantially raises the risk of infecting health care workers.
    — Lydia Depillis, ProPublica, 10 Apr. 2020
  • To do that, technicians first extract any genetic information from the throat swabs and sputum samples.
    — Arman Azad, CNN, 4 Mar. 2020
  • This study broke new ground in examining lung tissue instead of sputum or bronchial washing, and using a technique to identify each cell in a tissue sample.
    — Julie Washington, cleveland, 3 May 2021
  • The hospital had used two different methods to test for coronavirus: sputum samples and swabs inserted into the nose.
    — Dennis Pillion | [email protected], al, 21 Mar. 2020
  • These cases are difficult to detect because people have normal chest x-rays and negative sputum tests.
    — Sofia Moutinho, Scientific American, 14 May 2022
  • The symptoms measured included cough, wheezing, sputum production, shortness of breath, and rapid breathing.
    — Helen Branswell, STAT, 31 May 2023
  • The smell of purulent sputum incubating deep within a lung may waft its way up the bronchial tree, resulting in serious halitosis.
    — H Lee Kagan, Discover Magazine, 13 Mar. 2011
  • Diagnostic tests for the infection are not sensitive and mostly rely on sputum, which many sick people struggle to produce.
    — Apoorva Mandavilli, New York Times, 23 Sep. 2019
  • In an effort to address these issues, in countries like India, the government has released guidelines advising Covid positive patients to undergo the TB sputum test if cough persists for more than two to three weeks.
    — Anuradha Varanasi, Forbes, 26 Mar. 2022
  • Amazingly, Jerry had been harboring a chronic infection in his right lung, but it had not been accompanied by any of the typical symptoms of an abscess—fever, cough, sputum production, sweats, and weight loss.
    — H Lee Kagan, Discover Magazine, 13 Mar. 2011
  • Included in their rather diverse diet is their consumption of human detritus such as feces, sputum, toe nails, and bodily residue on surgical swabs.
    — Rebecca Kreston, Discover Magazine, 9 May 2012
  • Considering coronavirus is carried in saliva and sputum, kissing is just about the most efficient way to transmit the disease imaginable, short of spitting directly into your date’s mouth.
    — Emma Grey Ellis, Wired, 12 Mar. 2020
  • The immunologist also ordered a sputum test, which revealed a strain of staphylococcus bacteria in Mimi’s lungs.
    — Sandra G. Boodman, Washington Post, 31 Mar. 2018
  • The immunologist also ordered a sputum test, which revealed a strain of staphylococcus bacteria in Mimi's lungs.
    — Sandra G. Boodman, chicagotribune.com, 5 Apr. 2018
  • One small clinical study from 2018 that found that the compounds changed vapers’ sputum—the mucosal lining that covers the internal respiratory tract—to express different immune proteins.
    — Daniel Wolfe, Quartz, 18 Oct. 2019
  • Patients with lower blood concentration levels also bore the infectious bacteria in their sputum for longer periods of time — potentially spreading it by coughing, said Dr. Jan S. Fehr, one of the study’s lead authors.
    — Emily Baumgaertner, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2018
  • For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, higher temperatures also seem to cause more coughing, breathlessness, and sputum production among such patients.
    — Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker, 25 July 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sputum.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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