- 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.
- some implement, piece, or part resembling this.
- 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.
- to dig, cut, or remove with a spade (sometimes followed by up): Let's spade up the garden and plant some flowers.
- to call something by its real name; be candidly explicit; speak plainly or bluntly: To call a spade a spade, he's a crook.
- in spades, Informal.
- in the extreme; positively: He's a hypocrite, in spades.
- without restraint; outspokenly: I told him what I thought, in spades.
- a black figure shaped like an inverted heart and with a short stem at the cusp opposite the point, used on playing cards.
- a card of the suit bearing such figures.
- spades,
- the suit so marked: Spades is trump.Spades count double.
- the winning of seven spades or more.
- a contemptuous term used to refer to a Black person.
- a tool for digging, typically consisting of a flat rectangular steel blade attached to a long wooden handle
- an object or part resembling a spade in shape
- (as modifier)
- a heavy metallic projection attached to the trail of a gun carriage that embeds itself into the ground and so reduces recoil
- a type of oar blade that is comparatively broad and short
- a cutting tool for stripping the blubber from a whale or skin from a carcass
- to speak plainly and frankly
- to use a spade on
- the black symbol on a playing card resembling a heart-shaped leaf with a stem
- 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
- a derogatory word for Black
- in an extreme or emphatic way
