spud
/spʌd/
spud noun: a potato.
Noun
spud (plural spuds)
- A potato.
- We were peeling spuds on afternoon detail back of the lodge at summer camp — Billy Dean and I, and two or three more — and as usual arguing about whether the camp work ought to be done that way or not[…]1927 May, Boys' Life, page 8
- You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection. Don't compromise. Compromise is a language of the devil. Run in God's name, and let the world stand back and in wonder.1981, Colin Welland, Chariots of Fire, spoken by Rev. J.D. Liddell
- A hole in a sock.
- He leans over to one side to get the light, as he darns a hole in the heel of a sock. He is getting pretty smart at it now, and no longer makes spuds in the sock to chafe his heels.1958, Michael Kennedy Joseph, I'll Soldier No More: A Novel
- He was getting tall too, and his trousers were short even though his turn-ups had been turned down, and he'd got a spud in his socks where his shoe rubbed where he trod over trying to walk bow-legged to look like a cowboy.1990, Ray Salisbury, Sweet Thursday: A Novel
- A type of short nut (fastener) threaded on both ends.
- With the tank resting upside down on an old towel or blanket, use a spud wrench or a large pair of channel-type pliers to loosen the spud nut.2003, Rick Peters, Plumbing Basics, →ISBN, page 103
- For removing or tightening radiator spud nut.2011, Steve Ettlinger, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Everything Sold in Hardware Stores, →ISBN
- Anything short and thick.
- As I turned out of the wood, I heard the shrill tone of infant wailing; and as I came towards the cottage, I saw a fine flaxen-headed urchin, some six or seven years old, stamping and beating himself with his clenched little spuds of fists, in a perfect ecstasy of passion […]1844, Richard Sainthill, An Olla Podrida: Or, Scraps, Numismatic, Antiquarian, and Literary
- A piece of dough boiled in fat.
- A testicle.
- A dagger.
- A digging fork with three broad prongs.
- A tool, similar to a spade, used for digging out weeds etc.
- My love to Sheelah is more firmly fixt, / Than strongest weeds that grow these stones betwixt: / My spud these nettles from the stone can part; / No knife so keen to weed thee from my heart.1728, Jonathan Swift, A Pastoral Dialogue, 1910, William Browning (editor), The Poems of Jonathan Swift, Volume 2, 2004, Gutenberg eBook #13621
- Deprived of motion by the blow of the club, it can, on the other hand, be picked up without trouble and without the aid of a dog, and if not dead is despatched by a twist of the Bushman's fingers or a thrust from his spud. The spud is at once his dagger, his knife and fork, his chisel, his...1885, Richard Jefferies, After London: or Wild England, 2004 [1905], Gutenberg eBook #13944
- A barking spud; a long-handled tool for removing bark from logs.
- A movable post through a sleeve in the hull of a work barge to anchor it to the bottom of a body of water.
- A short central rod in a lighting fixture, for attachment to the light.
- This spigot (spud) is used to support the lamp, and allows it to be turned from side to side. The spud fits into a socket in a bracket (receptable^([sic])) or a C-clamp. This fixture enables you to suspend the lighting fixture from an overhead bar […]1991, Gerald Millerson, The Technique of Lighting for Television and Film, page 299
Verb
spud (third-person singular simple present spuds, present participle spudding, simple past and past participle spudded)
- To dig up weeds with a spud.
- There was thistle-spudding all over the Marsh; an army of thistles, an army of spudders.1936, Radclyffe Hall, The Sixth Beatitude
- To begin drilling an oil well; to drill by moving the drill bit and shaft up and down, or by raising and dropping a bit.
- A rope called the jerk line is attached to the wrist pin of the band-wheel crank, brought inside the derrick, and attached to the part of the drilling cable which extends from the crown pulley to the bull-wheel shaft by a curved metal slide called a spudding shoe. (See fig. 8.)1911, Isaiah Bowman, United States Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 257: Well-Drilling Methods, page 46
- When a well is spudded, the drilling assembly is loosely tied to the guide wires with 1/2″ manila rope.1999, Steve Devereux, Drilling for Oil & Gas: A Nontechnical Guide, page 86
- To remove the roofing aggregate and most of the bituminous top coating by scraping and chipping.
- To set up a recreational vehicle (RV) at a campsite, typically by leveling the RV and connecting it to electric, water, or sewer hookups.
Proper noun
spud
- A game for three or more players, involving the gradual elimination of players by throwing and catching a ball.
spud meaning in Tamil and Assamese
spud in Tamil
- கை அலவாங்கு, உருளைக்கிழங்கு
spud in Assamese
- spud, trowel
- খন্তি khonti
Examples of spud in a sentence
- His wife was darning a sock, running a needle and yarn across and back, over and under, up and down, gradually filling in the big spud-hole in her husband's sock.2000, Christopher Nolan, The Banyan Tree: A Novel:
- (Already becoming absorbed in his feet through the giant spud in his sock) Anyway, I'm er, I'm sorry.2007, Trevor Griffiths, “Sam, Sam”, in Theatre Plays One:
- "I rigged up a contraption to hold off those stinking beasts, and I spent a happy day there with a spud."1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
- Doesn't do a thing nowadays but dig in the garden with a spud.1925, P. G. Wodehouse, “Jeeves Takes Charge”, in Carry On, Jeeves, Arrow Books, published 2008, page 19:
Forms of spud
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | spuds |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | spuds |
| present participle | spudding |
| past participle | spudded |
| past | spudded |
Origin of spud
From Middle English spudde (“small knife”). Origin unknown; probably related to Danish spyd, Old Norse spjót (“spear”), German Spieß (“spear; spike; skewer”). Compare English spit (“sharp, pointed rod”). The use of the term for a potato perhaps first appeared in New Zealand and Australian dialect and slang.
Words formed from spud
Phrases with spud
Words that rhyme with spud
Questions about spud
- What does spud mean?
- Spud means a potato.
- What is spud in Tamil?
- Spud in Tamil is கை அலவாங்கு, உருளைக்கிழங்கு. See Spud meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use spud in a sentence?
- His wife was darning a sock, running a needle and yarn across and back, over and under, up and down, gradually filling in the big spud-hole in her husband's sock.
- What part of speech is spud?
- Spud can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce spud?
- Spud is pronounced /spʌd/.
- What is the plural of spud?
- The plural of spud is spuds.
Words near spud in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: spud (page history and authors); spud (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); খন্তি (Assamese) (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-spud.ogg.
Cite this entry: “spud.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spud. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.