spadeful
Americannoun
-
spadefuls
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of spadeful
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
There’s “nary a spadeful of dirt dug for a major development in Arlington that doesn’t have Art Walsh’s imprint on it,” The Washington Post wrote in 1982.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 28, 2022
Were we in a fool’s paradise, an epoch of superb whisky that would end when the last spadeful of Scottish peat is dug up and flung into the furnaces?
From Slate ● Apr. 11, 2013
They borrowed a shovel from one of the nearby houses and hit metal with the first spadeful of dirt.
From Salon ● Jan. 27, 2013
Burial At St. Cheron, France, a gravedigger dug all morning, finished a hole for a coffin, threw up a spadeful of earth which struck a neighboring tombstone.
From Time Magazine Archive
Spadeful after spadeful of earth was thrown out, but still the bottom was not reached.
From A Noble Woman by Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
The first thing to say about the logo, designed by Brazilian design firm Tátil, is that it has spadefuls of that most important quality in any Olympic branding: inoffensiveness.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 10, 2011
He appeared promptly, with the energy of a real dirt farmer turned, not one, but three spadefuls.
From Time Magazine Archive
As the men tossed up spadefuls of dirt, chatting and laughing under the glare of a light hooked up to a generator, Feng noticed a smell he likened to fermented bean curd.
From Time Magazine Archive
Marine squads blew up a ring of houses round the blaze, fought the creeping flames with spadefuls of earth and adobe dust.
From Time Magazine Archive
She was digging through the snow to the black earth of the cedar woods and throwing spadefuls of it underneath the tires.
From "Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel" by David Guterson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
