spoke

plural spokes

1. A support structure that connects the axle or the hub of a wheel to the rim.

   The wheels were at first copies of a light hand-cart wheel, the wood spokes were brought together by tapering the spoke ends and wedging them together at the nave or hub and inserting the other ends in slots in the felloe or wood rim.

   1921, W. F. Grew, The Cycle Industry, London, page 4

2. nauticalA projecting handle of a steering wheel.
3. A rung of a ladder.
4. A stick inserted into the wheel of a vehicle to keep the wheel from turning.
5. One of the outlying points in a hub-and-spoke model of transportation.

present singular third person spokes · participle present spoking · participle past spoked · past spoked

1. transitiveTo furnish (a wheel) with spokes.

1. pastsimple past of speak
2. archaicnonstandardparticiplepastpast participle of speak

   Cleo. Hye thee againe, / I haue ſpoke already, and it is provided.

   c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii], page 366, column 2

   2 more examples

   Thoſe who have ſpoke in its Favour have allowed, that it is defective, with regard to the preſent Circumſtances of Europe,[…]

   1741, The London Magazine, and Monthly Chronologer, volume 10, C. Ackers, page 435

   I should have spoke to him there and then, seen he was in the mood to do something stupid.

   2014 May 1, John Barker, Futures: A Novel, PM Press, page 131