Word.ws English Dictionary

spade-handed

spade-handed adjective: having large, spatulate hands.

Adjective

spade-handed (comparative more spade-handed, superlative most spade-handed)

  1. Having large, spatulate hands.
    • Large and square-headed, fatuously complacent, pot-bellied, spade-handed and dumpy-footed, for all the world presenting the appearance of animated jelly.1904, E. Pritchard, The Physiological Feeding of Infants, page 13
    • I can honestly say that so far-minus the spade-handed doctor perhaps — I had enjoyed every second and for me that was a big deal.2013, Ebury Press, Leanne Mitchell, Finding My Voice, →ISBN, page 131
  2. Having hands that are used for digging.
    • Even the spade-handed moles shall declare their folly.1945, Wystan Hugh Auden, The collected poetry of W. H. Auden, page 247
    • They in their turn sought useful wives, the broad-hipped, spade-handed type of wives who might build houses and bear children in the same afternoon and still have supper on the table when they got home.2011, Clare Clark, Savage Lands, →ISBN, page 36

Examples of spade-handed in a sentence

  • He was tall, this Swiss priest, lantern-jawed and spade-handed.2014, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, A Mortal Glamour, →ISBN:
  • Deliver me, my masters, head and heart, Heart of Cadaver's candle waxes thin, When blood, spade-handed, and the logic time Drive children up like bruises to the thumb From maid and head,2012, Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems, →ISBN:

Forms of spade-handed

comparativemore spade-handed
superlativemost spade-handed

Origin of spade-handed

From spade + handed.

Questions about spade-handed

What does spade-handed mean?
Spade-handed means having large, spatulate hands.
How do you use spade-handed in a sentence?
He was tall, this Swiss priest, lantern-jawed and spade-handed.
What part of speech is spade-handed?
Spade-handed is an adjective.

Words near spade-handed in the dictionary

  1. spade money
  2. spade moneys
  3. spade-feet
  4. spade-foot
  5. spade-foots
  6. spade-handed
  7. spade-man
  8. spade-men
  9. spade-toothed whale
  10. spade-toothed whales
  11. spade-worker

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spade-handed (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.

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