spuds

Noun

spud (plural spuds)

1. (informal) 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
2. (informal) 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
3. 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
4. (obsolete) 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
5. (US, dialectal, obsolete) A piece of dough boiled in fat.
6. (plural-normally, slang) A testicle.

See all 17 meanings of spud