吐(tǔ) - to spit out, to bring out in Mandarin

吐 (tǔ) is to push something out of the mouth on purpose: a stone, a mouthful of water, a snake's tongue. It is the deliberate action, and it very often takes 出 or 出来 after it, as in 吐出来.

It stretches naturally into speech. 吐实话 is to come out with the truth, and 吐出一句话 is to get a sentence out when it was difficult to say. That figurative use is common and not at all literary.

The trap is the second reading. The same character read in the fourth tone, tù, means to vomit, and that reading is what you want in 他吐了 after a bad meal. Tone is doing all the work here: tǔ is voluntary, tù is not. Our drills accept toneless pinyin, but in speech getting this pair the wrong way round is genuinely confusing.