spade

¹ American  

[speyd] / speɪd /

noun

1. a tool for digging, having an iron blade adapted for pressing into the ground with the foot and a long handle commonly with a grip or crosspiece at the top, and with the blade usually narrower and flatter than that of a shovel.

2. some implement, piece, or part resembling this.

3. a sharp projection on the bottom of a gun trail, designed to dig into the earth to restrict backward movement of the carriage during recoil.

---

verb (used with object)

• spades,
  present (3rd person singular)
• spaded,
  past participle,  past
• spading
  present participle

1. to dig, cut, or remove with a spade (sometimes followed byup ).

   Let's spade up the garden and plant some flowers.

idioms

1. call a spade a spade, to call something by its real name; be candidly explicit; speak plainly or bluntly.

   To call a spade a spade, he's a crook.

2. in spades,

   1. in the extreme; positively.

      He's a hypocrite, in spades.

   2. without restraint; outspokenly.

      I told him what I thought, in spades.

spade ² American  

[speyd] / speɪd /

noun

1. a black figure shaped like an inverted heart and with a short stem at the cusp opposite the point, used on playing cards.

2. a card of the suit bearing such figures.

3. spades,

   1. (used with a singular or plural verb) the suit so marked: Spades count double.

      Spades is trump.

      Spades count double.

   2. (used with a plural verb) the winning of seven spades or more.

4. Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a contemptuous term used to refer to a Black person.

---

spade ¹ British  

/ speɪd /

noun

1. a tool for digging, typically consisting of a flat rectangular steel blade attached to a long wooden handle

2. 1. an object or part resembling a spade in shape

   2. ( as modifier )

      a spade beard

3. a heavy metallic projection attached to the trail of a gun carriage that embeds itself into the ground and so reduces recoil

4. a type of oar blade that is comparatively broad and short Compare spoon

5. a cutting tool for stripping the blubber from a whale or skin from a carcass

6. to speak plainly and frankly

---

verb

1. (tr) to use a spade on

spade ² British  

/ speɪd /

noun

1. 1. the black symbol on a playing card resembling a heart-shaped leaf with a stem

   2. a card with one or more of these symbols or ( when pl ) the suit of cards so marked, usually the highest ranking of the four

2. a derogatory word for Black

3. informal in an extreme or emphatic way

---

spade More Idioms  

1. see call a spade a spade; do the spadework; in spades.

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• spader
  noun
• spadelike
  adjective
• unspaded
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Participles

• spading
  present
• spaded
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• spade
  simple
• spades
  simple
• have spaded
  perfect
• has spaded
  perfect
• am spading
  progressive
• are spading
  progressive
• is spading
  progressive
• have been spading
  perfect progressive
• has been spading
  perfect progressive

Past

• spaded
  simple
• had spaded
  perfect
• was spading
  progressive
• were spading
  progressive
• had been spading
  perfect progressive

Future

• will spade
  simple
• will have spaded
  perfect
• will be spading
  progressive
• will have been spading
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of spade¹

First recorded before 900; Middle English, Old English spadu, spada; cognate with Dutch spade, German Spaten, Old Norse spathi “spade”; akin to Greek spáthē “blade (of a sword, oar), spatula”; perhaps akin to Sanskrit sphyá- “shoulder blade, scapula”

Origin of spade²

First recorded in 1590–1600; from Italian, plural of spada originally, “sword,” from Latin spatha, from Greek spáthē; see origin at spade ¹

Explanation

If you're a gardener, you know that a spade is a small shovel with a short handle. A spade is perfect for planting bulbs and digging up weeds. In addition to a small digging tool, a spade is also a suit of playing card — the black one that looks a bit like an upside-down heart. There's even a card game called "Spades" in which a spade has a higher value than any other suit. The two meanings have different roots; the card suit spade comes from the Greek spathe, and the little shovel kind of spade has Proto-Germanic roots that mean "flat piece of wood."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

spade spades spaded spading

A year later, President Lyndon B. Johnson broke ground for what was to become “a living memorial to John F. Kennedy” with the gold-plated spade that President Taft had used for the Lincoln Memorial.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2026

The Trump Administration can rely on intellectual spade work from Sen. Roger Wicker, and many of the ideas we’ve discussed here are in the next defense authorization bill.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 16, 2025

"It could, arguably, be a spade - but I think it more strongly resembles a spear, the symbol that appears in Shakespeare's coat of arms."

From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2025

The investment firm thinks Tesla will manage through its Musk-related branding problems and its stock will rebound, but it calls a spade a spade.

From Slate ● Mar. 4, 2025

To spade a garden is to dig it up; to spay a cat is to keep her from having kittens.

From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner

On the sidewalk, generations play spades in the shade and the joyful screams of children emanate from a custom bouncy house adorned with an Egyptian pharaoh bust.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 14, 2026

Owing to a potential 200% return profile, that can come in spades if the call is right.

From MarketWatch ● Apr. 9, 2026

The five years, in actuality, starts from the point at which United get the green light to put spades in the ground.

From BBC ● Mar. 24, 2026

If there's one thing the 21st century has in spades, it's conspiracy theorists -- many of them angry, unhinged people hacking at their keyboards about grievances real and imagined.

From Barron's ● Mar. 1, 2026

This was before the UN brought us tools, so we had no shovels, axes, or spades.

From "Lost Boy, Lost Girl" by John Bul Dau

They spaded dirt over the plot, said a prayer and drove away.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 18, 2021

As the years went by, she never plowed, spaded or even made a compost pile.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 7, 2017

He admitted to the Committee that he had not been aware of many of the faults which the investigators had spaded up at Lockland, that "we weren't doing a job in some respects."

From Time Magazine Archive

In four years he has spaded up material that many a folklorist would give his magnetized recorder heads to own.

From Time Magazine Archive

She raked away our dead leaves, spaded new soil around us, and watered and fertilized.

From "The Wednesday Wars" by Gary D. Schmidt

President John Quincy Adams broke ground on the 185-mile Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in 1828, spading the first shovel of dirt just across the District line.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 23, 2017

Part of the special delight of “Ghostland” is its many informed asides, revealing Dickey’s long hours of spading up obscure facts and quotes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2016

Professor Aiken thinks that computers will take over intellectual drudgery as power-driven tools took over spading and reaping.

From Time Magazine Archive

Forked up large clods in the back garden with a spading fork.

From Time Magazine Archive

I was spading up a place for a garden in front of The Dump, and I’m not lying, this was hard work, since no one had spaded up this ground since forever.

From "Okay for Now" by Gary D. Schmidt

Related Words

• shovel