spade
/speɪ̯d/ noun B2- A garden tool with a handle and a flat blade for digging. Not to be confused with a shovel which is used for moving earth or other materials.
- A cutting instrument used in flensing a whale.
- A device for terminating an electrical conductor resembling a small spade.
Plural spades
From the library
He called them to his bedside and said, “My sons, there is a great treasure hid in one of my vineyards.” The sons, after his death, took their spades and mattocks and carefully dug over every portion of their land.
A wooden spade they gave to me
It always kind of gives me a thrill to see them ugly white grubs that spade up in the cucumber beds.
(Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.
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