spade.
A garden tool with a handle and a flat blade for digging. Not to be confused with a shovel which is used for moving earth or other materials.
Meaning & usage
A garden tool with a handle and a flat blade for digging. Not to be confused with a shovel which is used for moving earth or other materials.
A cutting instrument used in flensing a whale.
A device for terminating an electrical conductor resembling a small spade.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English spade, from Old English spada, spade, spadu (“spade”), from Proto-Germanic *spadô. Doublet of spatha, spathe, and épée.
To turn over soil with a spade to loosen the ground for planting.
To move with a spade, or as with a spade.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English spade, from Old English spada, spade, spadu (“spade”), from Proto-Germanic *spadô. Doublet of spatha, spathe, and épée.
A playing card marked with the symbol ♠.
I've got only one spade in my hand.
A black person.
Where this word comes from
Probably from Italian spade, plural of spada (“the ace of spades”, literally “sword, spade”), from earlier *spata, from Latin spatha, from Ancient Greek σπᾰ́θη (spắthē). Cognate with Etymology 1. So called for the shape, though what the shape was exactly meant to represent has been debated.
simple past and past participle of spay
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.