spadework
spadework noun: work done by digging with a spade.
Noun
spadework (uncountable)
- Work done by digging with a spade.
- It is this help that the present book attempts to give, and the moment of its appearance, during a partial lull of excavation, is an opportune one. There is a chance to take breath and gather up the threads, with the possibility that the next month's spade-work will not put us out of date.1907, Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries In Crete, page vii
- Synonyms:
- digging
- Work done in preparation for something else.
- There's a lot of spadework to be done before the scheme can be implemented.
- Removing a portion of chair which had got entangled in my back hair, I said with a candour that became me well: “I was looking for a mouse.” If she had replied, “Ah, yes, indeed. I understand now. A mouse, to be sure. Quite,” everything would have been nice and smooth, but she didn't. “A mouse?”...1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter VIII
- Synonyms:
- prep, prep work, preparatory work, groundwork, homework
spadework meaning in Tamil and Malayalam
spadework in Tamil
- முன்னணிய வேலை, முன்னேற்பாட்டுப் பணி
spadework in Malayalam
- preliminary work, groundwork, preliminaries
- പ്രാരംഭജോലി, പ്രാരംഭപ്രവർത്തനം, അടിസ്ഥപരമായ പ്രവൃത്തി, അരങ്ങൊരുക്കം, കളമൊരുക്കം, മണ്ണൊരുക്കൽ
Examples of spadework in a sentence
- “What do you mean?” Well, of course, if she didn't know what a mouse was, there was evidently a good deal of tedious spadework before us, and one would scarcely have known where to start.1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter VIII:
- Some essential spadework, on which certain details of the plan will be founded, is yet unfinished.1964 February, “British Railways' passenger plans”, in Modern Railways, page 73:
Synonyms of spadework
- digging
- prep
- prep work
- preparatory work
- groundwork
- homework
Origin of spadework
From spade + work.
Questions about spadework
- What does spadework mean?
- Spadework means work done by digging with a spade.
- What is spadework in Tamil?
- Spadework in Tamil is முன்னணிய வேலை, முன்னேற்பாட்டுப் பணி. See Spadework meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use spadework in a sentence?
- “What do you mean?” Well, of course, if she didn't know what a mouse was, there was evidently a good deal of tedious spadework before us, and one would scarcely have known where to start.
- What part of speech is spadework?
- Spadework is a noun.
Words near spadework in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: spadework (page history and authors); spadework (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); spadework (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset 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:
Cite this entry: “spadework.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spadework. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.