spad

noun

1. (UK, informal)A government adviser, often in a political or media role.

   “SPAD Special Advisor”

   “A successful stint as a spad can be a crucial political apprenticeship - as many of the current crop of professional politicians including the Miliband brothers, David Cameron and George Osborne can testify - so long as they stay in the dark.”

   “The hit BBC sitcom satirising the inner workings of Whitehall and the so-called spads contains "more than a grain of truth", the head of the cross-party public administration select committee has warned.”

2. A nail one or two inches long, of iron, brass, tin, or tinner iron, with a hole through the flattened head, used to mark stations in underground surveying.
3. (abbreviation, alt-of, clipping)Clipping of spadona/spadone.

   “No. 6.—Spadonas or spads, the first wing-quills of the chick, clipped at about six months.”

   “RAW OSTRICH FEATHERS / Primes, Wings, White Feminas, Spads, Etc.”

   ““What d’you mean—‘feathers’,” asked the tanned young public school man who volunteered to trot me round, “spads, second-after-chicks, fancies, natals, black butts, adults, juvenals, byocks, chicks, primes, feminas, or what?”[…]The first white ones we call spads.[…]Two or three months after that clipping we pull out the spad quills.”

   “An improvement was noted in the demand for femina wings, spads and long bodies;”

4. (UK)An instance of a signal passed at danger.

   “"We found there had been 60 SPADs in the Paddington throat in the previous eight years, and that was all to do with the layout becoming more complex because of the Heathrow Express.”

5. (UK, alt-of, alternative, informal)Alternative form of spad (“special advisor in government”).
6. A relative measurement of the amount of chlorophyll present in a leaf, based on measurements with a SPAD meter produced by Minolta.
7. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of self-propelled air defense; a self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicle.
8. (UK, alt-of, informal)Alternative letter-case form of spad (“special adviser”).

phrase

1. (UK, abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of signal passed at danger.

verb

1. (UK)To pass a signal at danger.

   “SPADing is best seen as a systemic problem requiring a systemic solution”

   “SN109 should be known to all drivers driving out of Paddington as a multi SPADed signal”

   “Signal awareness aids were present at SPADed signals”