spade
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.
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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
"Let's call a spade a spade," Celine Imart, the French member of the parliament who led the initiative was quoted by AFP news agency as saying about plant-based products.
From BBC ● Oct. 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
While there, Saavedra admitted in his plea agreement, he got a tattoo on his left ankle of the “unofficial logo” of the Lakewood station: a spade with the number 13 inside of it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 18, 2025
So they kept swinging the spade and striking, but the sun- blistered ground had hardened like a rock, the dirt unyielding, compressed, almost petrified.
From "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
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In south Wales, photos posted online showed drinks cans, footballs, buckets and spades and even a lilo and flippers abandoned at Barry Island beach.
From BBC ● May 29, 2026
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
Life is about showing up for others, and you have done that in spades, but it’s also about enjoying what the world has to offer.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 10, 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
And as soon as they’re around the bend, I head into the dining room and learn how to play spades for the rest of the afternoon, which Armelio absolutely does crush me in.
From "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini
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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
I struggled to avoid being spaded by the spinning Dunlops and to unhook my boot.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Young Barney drifted out to South Africa in the '70s when individual diggers spaded the surface soil and "panned" it for diamonds, each man with his own teetering sieve.
From Time Magazine Archive
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With my drawn blade I spaded up the votive pit, and poured libations round it to the unnumbered dead: sweet milk and honey, then sweet wine, and last clear water; and I scattered barley down.
From "The Odyssey" by Homer
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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
Other settlers heard of it and began spading up crocks of wheat, kitchen utensils and tins of gasoline.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Kennedy's out-of-state legwork made many a Democrat indebted; Kennedy's backyard spading produced a record-breaking, 870,000-vote plurality for him and high-lift coattails for other Massachusetts Democrats.
From Time Magazine Archive
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It was easy spading, since the dirt had already been turned up once; also the manure was still in it, so I did not have to haul that again.
From "Z for Zachariah" by Robert C. O’Brien
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Vocabulary lists containing spade
My Brother Sam is Dead
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"Digging" by Seamus Heaney
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"Digging" by Seamus Heaney
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