Showing results for "spoke"

• past tense form of speak.

spoke

¹ American  

[spohk] / spoʊk /

verb

1. a simple past tense of speak.

2. Nonstandard. a past participle of speak.

3. Archaic. a past participle of speak.

---

spoke ² American  

[spohk] / spoʊk /

noun

• spokes
  plural

1. one of the bars, rods, or rungs radiating from the hub or nave of a wheel and supporting the rim or felloe.

2. something that resembles the spoke of a wheel.

3. a handlelike projection from the rim of a wheel, as a ship's steering wheel.

4. a rung of a ladder.

---

verb (used with object)

spoked, spoking

1. to fit or furnish with or as with spokes.

spoke ¹ British  

/ spəʊk /

noun

1. a radial member of a wheel, joining the hub to the rim

2. a radial projection from the rim of a wheel, as in a ship's wheel

3. a rung of a ladder

4. to thwart someone's plans

---

verb

1. (tr) to equip with or as if with spokes

spoke ² British  

/ spəʊk /

verb

1. the past tense of speak

2. archaic a past participle of speak

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• spokeless
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• spokes
  plural

Etymology

Origin of spoke

First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English spāca; cognate with Dutch speek, German Speiche

Explanation

A spoke is a bar or rod that connects the center of a wheel to its rim. The purpose of spokes is to support the structure of the wheel. You can jazz up your bike by weaving ribbons between the spokes. Originally, spoke meant "a piece of a split log." When wagon wheels were made of wood, they were formed using these spokes, which were carved into matching shapes. Wheels with spokes were invented around 2000 B.C.E. or even earlier, and they revolutionized travel, making vehicles lighter and faster. Experts believe that spoke shares a root with spike.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

spoke spokes spoked spoking

In 2023, he spoke with Tang, who later told his staff he was impressed by Liang’s “different ways of thinking.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

She said she had visited the site this week and spoke to staff who "can't just turn the radar off and leave".

From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026

She and her 80-year-old husband held hands as they walked from the Oval Office to the podium, and the president sat in the audience as Melania spoke.

From Barron's ● Aug. 20, 2026

ICYMI’s Kate Lindsay spoke to author Kathryn Jezer-Morton about how to “friction-maxx.”

From Slate ● Aug. 20, 2026

The barking voice on the other end of the line spoke in rapid-fire French.

From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse

Since World War II the alliance had worked like a wheel: The U.S. as the indispensable hub and the rest as spokes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026

When England did safely gather, Australia were able to shove a spanner in the spokes of their usually powerful driving maul.

From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2025

The prison’s design, five long cellblocks that meet at a rotunda like spokes of a wheel, was inspired by the famous Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 12, 2024

“We are the sand in the machinery, the stick between the spokes, the splinter under the fingernail,” Orbán said in a speech to tens of thousands of supporters in 2021.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 3, 2024

We huddle together and put our hands in the center so that we make a big wheel of bodies with arm spokes.

From "Boy21" by Matthew Quick

So, on Tuesday’s episode oof What Next, I spoked to Jeff Goodell about what we’re going to do about it.

From Slate ● Jul. 12, 2023

By 4000 years ago, the new horse dominated a region from central Anatolia to central Russia, where people of the Sintashta culture buried horses with the earliest spoked wheels and chariots in mounds called kurgans.

From Science Magazine ● Oct. 20, 2021

I also spoked with NBA commissioner Adam Silver andasked him if he would ever punish a player for speaking out on something that Silver personally disagrees with.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 17, 2021

In 14 years wearing the spoked “B,” Chara was named the league’s top defenseman in ’09 and five other times finished in the top five.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 29, 2021

He can now see that it is, indeed, his own journal, open to a page with a card pasted onto it, printed with winged creatures crawling over a spoked wheel.

From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern

In "Miniature," flowers are magnified to astronomical proportions: One dandelion is yellow, is a solar flame spoking from a green nether rim; the other gray, a dainty crumb-cake of a moon.

From Time Magazine Archive

A large piece of graphed paper containing a design for an outdoor space: a fountain in the middle and pebble pathways spoking out from it.

From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse

Souilly was barely a hamlet surrounded by farmland, a cluster of small cottages spoking out like a wheel from a modest stone town hall.

From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse

Your Lordschip knawis weall the man: he hes spoking with your Lordschip: I thought yow content with him.

From The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) by David Laing