Green’s Dictionary of Slang

oratory, speechifying; in weak sense, talking loud; also attrib.

1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 127: The moment he had ceas’d from spouting, / The raggamuffins fell a shouting.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: spouting club A meeting of apprentices and mechanics to rehearse different characters in plays: thus forming recruits for the strolling companies.
1809		B.H. Malkin (trans.) Adventures of Gil Blas (1822) I 218: He began gesticulating and spouting as he went along.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1788].
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue [as cit. 1788].
1848		‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. III 61: Now do quit yer spoutin, Frank, and tell us wots wot!
1848		Thackeray Vanity Fair II 136: The dreary spouting of the Reverend Bartholomew Irons.
1869		Armagh Guardian 26 Nov. 7/1: Such a tremendous row going on, and all this mad spouting.
1877		J. Greenwood Dick Temple I 254: I’d just worked myself up to spouting pitch.
1889		Dead Bird (Sydney) 19 Oct. 6/3: The meeting was nothing but a ‘bedlam’ [...] and every present appeared to be delighted when the ‘spouting’ was finished.
1893		‘’Arriet on Labour’ in Punch 26 Aug. 88/2: Theayters, ’ops, and houtings / Warm a gil’s ’art a rare sight more than politics and spoutings.
1904		Ade ‘The Fable of the Taxpayers Friend’ in True Bills 117: All of his Spouting was done by Proxy, for he had on his Staff several Fourteen-karat Lawyers.
1917		(con. 1908) E. Lynn Adventures of a Woman Hobo 143: ‘Spouting for eats’ has come to be quite a joke with us.
1942		P. Wylie Generation of Vipers 96: The universal American custom of spouting the apotheosis of common man is, at best, a dangerous form of flattery, and more often a fearsomely hazardous form of universal self-deceit.
1958		E. Gilbert Vice Trap 23: An old boy came out [...] I didn’t listen to his spouting.