spade

/speɪ̯d/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Scotland/sped/

spade noun: 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. Also the simple past and past participle of spay.

Image: Rasbak, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

spade (plural spades)

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.
- '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.'[1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC
- "[...] And not a single spade has gone in the ground - not a single mile of track built."2021 October 6, Paul Stephen, “Network News: Labour: build HS2 and NPR and end "paper promises"”, in RAIL, number 941, page 25
A cutting instrument used in flensing a whale.
A device for terminating an electrical conductor resembling a small spade.

Verb

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

To turn over soil with a spade to loosen the ground for planting.
To move with a spade, or as with a spade.
- ‘Le baccarat,’ intoned the croupier as he spaded the thick chips over the table to Bond.1953, Ian Fleming, “Moment of Truth”, in Casino Royale, London: Pan Books, published 1955, page 78

Noun (2)

spade (plural spades)

A playing card marked with the symbol ♠.
- I've got only one spade in my hand.
(ethnic, offensive, slur) A black person.
- And as for a divorce, I know plenty spades right here in Harlem get married any time they want to.1929, Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry, New York: Collier Books, published 1970, →ISBN, page 161
- 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, Joan Didion, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Proper noun capitalized: Spade

Spade (plural Spades)

A surname.

Also used as

spade is also the simple past and past participle of spay.

spade meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu

spade in Hindi

garden tool with a handle and a flat blade for digging: फावड़ा phāvṛā, फ़ावड़ा fāvṛā
one of the black suits in a deck of cards: हुक्म hukm

spade in Urdu

garden tool with a handle and a flat blade for digging: فَاوَڑَا fāvaṛā

spade in Bengali

garden tool with a handle and a flat blade for digging: কোদাল kōdal

spade in Telugu

one of the black suits in a deck of cards: ఇస్పేటు ispēṭu

More languagesFewer languages

spade in Gujarati: સ્પૅડ કરવા માટે
spade in Sinhala: ඉස්කෝප්පය iskōppaya
spade in Assamese: কোদাল küdal
spade in Nepali: स्पेड, कुदाल, स्प्याड गर्न
spade in Arabic: مِجْرَفَة mijrafa, مِجْرَف mijraf, مِسْحَاة misḥāh, الْبَسْتُونِيّ al-bastūniyy
spade in Malay: sodok
spade in Indonesian: sekop, sodok
spade in Persian: بیل bil, پیک pik
spade in Thai: เสียม sǐiam, พลั่ว plûua, โพดำ poo-dam
spade in Vietnamese: xẻng, xuồng
spade in Myanmar: ဂေါ် gau, ဖူး hpu:

Examples of spade in a sentence

Rakes, shovels, hoes, and spades are some of the tools of the gardener's trade.
I thought I'd draw another spade, but I ended up with a busted flush.
Last year we harvested almost no potatoes, but this year we're getting them in spades.

All 40 example sentences with spade

Forms of spade

Noun
plural	spades
Verb
third-person singular present	spades
present participle	spading
past participle	spaded
past	spaded
Proper noun
plural	Spades

Plural of spade: spades

Origin of spade

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

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.

Phrases with spade

7 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with spade

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about spade

What does spade mean?: Spade means 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.
What is spade in Hindi?: Spade in Hindi is फावड़ा (phāvṛā), फ़ावड़ा (fāvṛā), हुक्म (hukm). See Spade meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is spade?: Spade can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce spade?: Spade is pronounced /speɪ̯d/.
What is the plural of spade?: The plural of spade is spades.

Words near spade in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: spade (page history and authors); Spade (page history and authors); spade (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spade (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-spade.ogg, en-au-spade.ogg.

Cite this entry: “spade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.