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spanner.

A hand tool for adjusting nuts and bolts.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈspænə/Received-Pronunciation[ˈspænə] ~ [ˈspanə]Received-Pronunciation/ˈspanə/British, Northern-England, Southern, Standard, Wales[ˈspanə]British, Northern-England, Southern, Standard, Wales

  1. A hand tool for adjusting nuts and bolts.

    Commonwealth · Ireland · UK
    Pass me that spanner, Jake; there's just one more bolt to screw in.

  2. A hand tool for adjusting nuts and bolts. Any of certain types of such a tool that have a pin or hook to engage the driven object.

    Canada · Commonwealth · Ireland · UK · US
    The groove in this toolholder is what the spanner grabs onto when you are changing the tool.

  3. One who, or that which, spans.

    rare

  4. A (usually sparse) graph whose shortest path distances approximate those in a dense graph or other metric space.

  5. A hand tool shaped like a small crank handle, for winding the spring of a wheel lock on a musket.

  6. A device in early steam engines for moving the valves for the alternate admission and shutting off of the steam.

    obsolete

  7. A problem, dilemma or obstacle; something unexpected or troublesome (in the phrase spanner in the works)

    Ireland · UK
    Halfway through the production of Macbeth, the director found that the stage was smaller than he expected. This really threw a spanner in the works.

  8. A stupid or unintelligent person; one prone to making mistakes, especially in language.

    Ireland · UK · derogatory · mildly
    You spanner, Rodney! I wanted some time, not a bunch of thyme!
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend-der. Proto-Germanic *spannō Old English spann Middle English spanne English span Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere English -er English spanner From span + -er.

verb/ˈspænə/Received-Pronunciation[ˈspænə] ~ [ˈspanə]Received-Pronunciation/ˈspanə/British, Northern-England, Southern, Standard, Wales[ˈspanə]British, Northern-England, Southern, Standard, Wales

  1. To use a spanner; to fix with a spanner

Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend-der. Proto-Germanic *spannō Old English spann Middle English spanne English span Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere English -er English spanner From span + -er.

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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.