spade

plural spades

1. A garden tool with a handle and a flat blade for digging. Not to be confused with a shovel which is used for moving earth or other materials.

   "[...] And not a single spade has gone in the ground - not a single mile of track built."

   2021 October 6, Paul Stephen, “Network News: Labour: build HS2 and NPR and end "paper promises"”, in RAIL, number 941, page 25

   2 more examples

   'Make your mind easy,' Ratsey said; 'I have dug too often in this graveyard for any to wonder if they see me with a spade.'

   [1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC

   Rather than nonstop combat, the day-to-day experience of a Roman soldier was perhaps just as likely to involve spades as swords – though combat readiness was never far from mind.

   2025 July 15, James Osborne, “Could you have survived as a Roman soldier? Here's the surprising truth about life in the ancient army”, in History Extra, archived from the original on 15 Jul 2025

2. A cutting instrument used in flensing a whale.
3. businessA device for terminating an electrical conductor resembling a small spade.

present singular third person spades · participle present spading · participle past spaded · past spaded

1. To turn over soil with a spade to loosen the ground for planting.
2. To move with a spade, or as with a spade.

   ‘Le baccarat,’ intoned the croupier as he spaded the thick chips over the table to Bond.

   1953, Ian Fleming, “Moment of Truth”, in Casino Royale, London: Pan Books, published 1955, page 78

plural spades

1. card gamesA playing card marked with the symbol ♠.

   I've got only one spade in my hand.

2. ethnicoffensiveslurA black person.

   And as for a divorce, I know plenty spades right here in Harlem get married any time they want to.

   1929, Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry, New York: Collier Books, published 1970, →ISBN, page 161

   2 more examples

   Example: Max was in a hospital in New York and "the night nurse was a groovy spade, and in the afternoon for therapy there was a chick from Israel who was interesting, but there was nothing much to do in the morning, so I left".

   1968, Joan Didion, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

   It had even gotten to the point that Negroes were no longer in the hip scene, not even as totem figures. It was unbelievable. Spades, the very soul figures of Hip, of jazz, of the hip vocabulary itself, man and like dig and baby and scarf and split and later and so fine, of civil rights and graduating from Reed College and living on North Beach, down Mason, and balling spade cats—all that good elaborate petting and patting and pouring soul all over the spades—all over, finished, incredibly.

   1968, Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →OCLC, page 12

1. obsoleteparticiplepastsimple past and past participle of spay

plural Spades

1. A surname.