Noun: spade
| Singular | spade |
| Plural | spades |
Sample Sentences
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'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:]
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"[...] 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:]
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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:]
Nouns inflected like spade
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English spade, from Old English spada, spade, spadu (“spade”), from Proto-Germanic *spadô. Doublet of spatha, spathe, and épée. See: Middle English Nouns '
spade', Old English Nouns '
spada'.
Verbs referencing "spade"
German Nouns
Spaten, Russian Nouns
портупея, Bulgarian Nouns
спатия.