Word.ws English Dictionary

spadger

spadger noun: a sparrow.

Noun

spadger (plural spadgers)

  1. (colloquial, dialectal) A sparrow.
    • Genuine cockney ‘spadgers’ have appeared at Bulli. The little hoppers are spreading rapidly all over the colony.1884 September 24, The Newcastle Morning Herald, Newcastle, NSW, page 3, column 7
    • The broadcasting blokes are twittering away like spadgers over there.1961, Margery Allingham, Three cases for Mr. Campion, page 82
  2. (colloquial) A boy.
    • He laughs and says, “My, you sure talk brash, for such a little spadger.”1970, Donald Harington, Lightning Bug

spadger meaning in Tamil

spadger in Tamil

ஊர்க்குருவி

Forms of spadger

pluralspadgers

Origin of spadger

Originally British dialect (1850s), from spadge (fronted variant of northern dialect spag) + -er. The northern dialect term spag is a derhoticised form of Scots spurg (“sparrow”), from spur (from Old Norse spǫrr (“sparrow”), suffixless cognate of Old English spearwa) + diminutive suffix -ock, with loss of vowel and voicing of -k to -g after r.

Questions about spadger

What does spadger mean?
Spadger means a sparrow.
What is spadger in Tamil?
Spadger in Tamil is ஊர்க்குருவி. See Spadger meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is spadger?
Spadger is a noun.
What is the plural of spadger?
The plural of spadger is spadgers.

Words near spadger in the dictionary

  1. spadetails
  2. spadewise
  3. spadework
  4. spadeworker
  5. spadeworkers
  6. spadger
  7. spadgers
  8. spadia
  9. spadias
  10. spadiceous
  11. spadices

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spadger (page history and authors); spadger (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: “spadger.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spadger. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.