spad
UK/ˈspæd/
spad noun: a government adviser, often in a political or media role. Also the clipping of spadona/spadone.
Noun (1)
spad (plural spads)
- A government adviser, often in a political or media role.
- SPAD Special Advisor1997 November, Reddy Hannah with Wimbush, Angela and Linesberry, Debbie, “Abbreviations and Acronyms”, in Dr. Russell G. Swenson, editor, Defense and Intelligence Abbreviations and Acronyms...
- A successful stint as a spad can be a crucial political apprenticeship - as many of the current crop of professional politicians including the Miliband brothers, David Cameron and George Osborne can testify - so long as they stay in the dark.2009, Ben Wright, Hidden world of the political advisers, BBC
Noun (2)
spad (plural spads)
- A nail one or two inches long, of iron, brass, tin, or tinner iron, with a hole through the flattened head, used to mark stations in underground surveying.
Phrase capitalized: SPAD
SPAD
- Initialism of signal passed at danger.
Noun (3) capitalized: SPAD
SPAD (plural SPADs)
- An instance of a signal passed at danger.
- "We found there had been 60 SPADs in the Paddington throat in the previous eight years, and that was all to do with the layout becoming more complex because of the Heathrow Express.2026 March 4, Christian Wolmar, “Railtrack: what really happened”, in RAIL, number 1056, page 53
- Alternative form of spad (“special advisor in government”).
- A relative measurement of the amount of chlorophyll present in a leaf, based on measurements with a SPAD meter produced by Minolta.
- Initialism of self-propelled air defense; a self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicle.
Verb capitalized: SPAD
SPAD (third-person singular simple present SPADs, present participle SPADing, simple past and past participle SPADed)
- To pass a signal at danger.
- SPADing is best seen as a systemic problem requiring a systemic solution2005, Andrew Hopkins, Safety, Culture and Risk: The Organisational Causes of Disasters
- SN109 should be known to all drivers driving out of Paddington as a multi SPADed signal2006 July 7, Karen Clarke, Gillian Hardstone, Mark Rouncefield, Ian Sommerville, Trust in Technology: A Socio-Technical Perspective, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 138
Noun (4) capitalized: SpAd
SpAd (plural SpAds)
- Alternative letter-case form of spad (“special adviser”).
Also used as
spad is also the clipping of spadona/spadone.
Forms of spad
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | spads |
| alternative form | SpAd |
| alternative form | SpAD |
| plural | SPADs |
| plural | SpAds |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | SPADs |
| present participle | SPADing |
| past participle | SPADed |
| past | SPADed |
Origin of spad
Shortening of special adviser.
Words that rhyme with spad
Questions about spad
- What does spad mean?
- Spad means a government adviser, often in a political or media role.
- What part of speech is spad?
- Spad can be a noun, a phrase or a verb.
- How do you pronounce spad?
- Spad is pronounced /ˈspæd/ (UK).
- What is the plural of spad?
- The plural of spad is spads.
Words near spad in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: spad (page history and authors); SPAD (page history and authors); SpAd (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “spad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.