spade

noun

1. 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.

   “'Make your mind easy,' Ratsey said; 'I have dug too often in this graveyard for any to wonder if they see me with a spade.'”

   “"[...] And not a single spade has gone in the ground - not a single mile of track built."”

2. A cutting instrument used in flensing a whale.
3. A device for terminating an electrical conductor resembling a small spade.
4. A playing card marked with the symbol ♠.

   “I've got only one spade in my hand.”

5. (ethnic, offensive, slur)A black person.

   “And as for a divorce, I know plenty spades right here in Harlem get married any time they want to.”

   “Example: Max was in a hospital in New York and "the night nurse was a groovy spade, and in the afternoon for therapy there was a chick from Israel who was interesting, but there was nothing much to do in the morning, so I left".”

   “It had even gotten to the point that Negroes were no longer in the hip scene, not even as totem figures. It was unbelievable. Spades, the very soul figures of Hip, of jazz, of the hip vocabulary itself, man and like dig and baby and scarf and split and later and so fine, of civil rights and graduating from Reed College and living on North Beach, down Mason, and balling spade cats—all that good elaborate petting and patting and pouring soul all over the spades—all over, finished, incredibly.”

verb

1. To turn over soil with a spade to loosen the ground for planting.
2. (form-of, obsolete, participle, past)simple past and past participle of spay

name

1. A surname.