spade

• IPA^(key): /speɪ̯d/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

  • Audio (General Australian):

    (file)

• (Scotland) IPA^(key): /sped/
• Rhymes: -eɪd
• Homophone: spayed (except Scotland)

From Middle English spade, from Old English spada, spade, spadu (“spade”), from Proto-Germanic *spadô. Doublet of spatha, spathe, and épée.

spade (plural spades)

1. 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.
   • [1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC:

     'Make your mind easy,' Ratsey said; 'I have dug too often in this graveyard for any to wonder if they see me with a spade.'

   • 2021 October 6, Paul Stephen, “Network News: Labour: build HS2 and NPR and end "paper promises"”, in RAIL, number 941, page 25:

     "[...] And not a single spade has gone in the ground - not a single mile of track built."

2. A cutting instrument used in flensing a whale.
3. (electrical engineering) A device for terminating an electrical conductor resembling a small spade.

• → Scottish Gaelic: spaid
• → Fiji Hindi: sipi

spade (third-person singular simple present spades, present participle spading, simple past and past participle spaded)

1. To turn over soil with a spade to loosen the ground for planting.

• spader

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.^[1]

spade (plural spades)

1. (card games) A playing card marked with the symbol ♠.

   I've got only one spade in my hand.

2. (offensive, ethnic slur) A black person.
   • 1929, Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry, New York: Collier Books, published 1970, →ISBN, page 161:

     And as for a divorce, I know plenty spades right here in Harlem get married any time they want to.

   • 1968, Joan Didion, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

     Example: Max was in a hospital in New York and "the night nurse was a groovy spade, and in the afternoon for therapy there was a chick from Israel who was interesting, but there was nothing much to do in the morning, so I left".

   • 1968, Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Bantam, published 1997, →ISBN, page 9:

     It had even gotten to the point that Negroes were no longer in the hip scene, not even as totem figures. It was unbelievable. Spades, the very soul figures of Hip, of jazz, of the hip vocabulary itself, man and like dig and baby and scarf and split and later and so fine, of civil rights and graduating from Reed College and living on North Beach, down Mason, and balling spade cats—all that good elaborate petting and patting and pouring soul all over the spades—all over, finished, incredibly.

spade

1. (obsolete) simple past and past participle of spay

• adeps, apsed, paeds, pedas

• IPA^(key): /ˈspaːdə/

• Audio:

  (file)

• spa

From Middle Dutch spade, from Old Dutch *spado, from Proto-Germanic *spadô.

spade m (plural spaden or spades)

1. spade

From Middle Dutch spâde, from Old Dutch *spādi, from Proto-Germanic *spēdiz (“late”).

spade (comparative spader, superlative spaadst)

1. (archaic) late

Declension of spade
uninflected	spade
inflected	spade
comparative	spader
		positive	comparative	superlative
predicative/adverbial		spade	spader	het spaadst het spaadste
indefinite	m./f. sing.	spade	spadere	spaadste
	n. sing.	spade	spader	spaadste
	plural	spade	spadere	spaadste
definite		spade	spadere	spaadste
partitive		spades	spaders	—

• laat

Possibly from pata (“pot”) (perhaps through English spade, since spades (the card suit) are also called pata in Finnish).

• IPA^(key): /ˈspɑde/, [ˈs̠pɑ̝de̞]
• Rhymes: -ɑde
• Syllabification^(key): spa‧de
• Hyphenation^(key): spa‧de

spade

1. (military slang) field cook

   Synonym: sotilaskeittäjä

From Latin spatha (“a type of sword”), from Ancient Greek σπάθη (spáthē, “broad blade”).

spade f (plural spadis)

1. sword

• IPA^(key): /ˈspa.de/
• Rhymes: -ade
• Hyphenation: spà‧de

spade f

1. plural of spada

• spad

From Old English spadu.

• IPA^(key): /ˈspaːd(ə)/

spade (plural spades)

1. tool for digging, shovel

• English: spade
• Scots: spade, spaid
• Yola: spaade

• “spāde, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

From Middle Low German spade and Old Norse spaði, jarnspaði.

spade m (definite singular spaden, indefinite plural spader, definite plural spadene)

1. spade (a garden tool)

   kalle en spade for en spade ― call a spade a spade

2. spadeful

   tre spader jord ― three spadefuls of earth

• “spade” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

• spåddå (dialectal, Trøndelag)
• spa (dialectal)

Inherited from Old Norse spaði.

• IPA^(key): /²spɑː(d)ə/

spade m (definite singular spaden, indefinite plural spadar, definite plural spadane)

1. spade, shovel (a garden tool)

   kalle ein spade for ein spade ― call a spade a spade

2. spadeful

   ein spade sand ― a spadeful of sand

• hake (“(wooden) shovel”)
• rokko (“(wooden) shovel”) (dialectal)

• steikespade

spade (present tense spader, past tense spadde, past participle spadd or spadt, present participle spadande, imperative spad)

1. alternative form of spa

• “spade” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

• IPA^(key): /ˈspɑ.de/

spade

1. inflection of spadu:
   1. nominative plural
   2. accusative singular/plural
   3. genitive/dative singular

From Old Norse spaði, from Middle Low German spade, from Proto-Germanic *spadô.

spade c

1. a shovel (for digging – compare skyffel)
2. a spade (garden tool, or toy spade or the like)
3. (chiefly in compounds) any of various spade-like tools

Common, everyday word, and the first word native speakers are likely to think of when translating English shovel. More common compared to spade in English.

• skopa
• skovel (“large, wide, curved shovel”)
• skyffel (“shovel (for moving material)”)

• spade in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• spade in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)