spud – English noun declension

English noun forms of spud

Noun: spud
Singularspud
Pluralspuds

Sample Sentences

  • We were peeling spuds on afternoon detail back of the lodge at summer camp — Billy Dean and I, and two or three more — and as usual arguing about whether the camp work ought to be done that way or not[…] [1927 May, Boys' Life, page 8:]
  • You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection. Don't compromise. Compromise is a language of the devil. Run in God's name, and let the world stand back and in wonder. [1981, Colin Welland, Chariots of Fire, spoken by Rev. J.D. Liddell:]
  • He leans over to one side to get the light, as he darns a hole in the heel of a sock. He is getting pretty smart at it now, and no longer makes spuds in the sock to chafe his heels. [1958, Michael Kennedy Joseph, I'll Soldier No More: A Novel:]
  • He was getting tall too, and his trousers were short even though his turn-ups had been turned down, and he'd got a spud in his socks where his shoe rubbed where he trod over trying to walk bow-legged to look like a cowboy. [1990, Ray Salisbury, Sweet Thursday: A Novel:]
  • His wife was darning a sock, running a needle and yarn across and back, over and under, up and down, gradually filling in the big spud-hole in her husband's sock. [2000, Christopher Nolan, The Banyan Tree: A Novel:]
  • (Already becoming absorbed in his feet through the giant spud in his sock) Anyway, I'm er, I'm sorry. A quite unnecessary embarrassment for you. (He removes sock completely, begins rhythmic rubbing of webs) [2007, Trevor Griffiths, “Sam, Sam”, in Theatre Plays One:]
  • With the tank resting upside down on an old towel or blanket, use a spud wrench or a large pair of channel-type pliers to loosen the spud nut. [2003, Rick Peters, Plumbing Basics, →ISBN, page 103:]
  • For removing or tightening radiator spud nut. [2011, Steve Ettlinger, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Everything Sold in Hardware Stores, →ISBN:]
  • As I turned out of the wood, I heard the shrill tone of infant wailing; and as I came towards the cottage, I saw a fine flaxen-headed urchin, some six or seven years old, stamping and beating himself with his clenched little spuds of fists, in a perfect ecstasy of passion […] [1844, Richard Sainthill, An Olla Podrida: Or, Scraps, Numismatic, Antiquarian, and Literary:]
  • 1728, Jonathan Swift, A Pastoral Dialogue, 1910, William Browning (editor), The Poems of Jonathan Swift, Volume 2, 2004, Gutenberg eBook #13621,
  • My love to Sheelah is more firmly fixt, / Than strongest weeds that grow these stones betwixt: / My spud these nettles from the stone can part; / No knife so keen to weed thee from my heart.
  • 1885, Richard Jefferies, After London: or Wild England, 2004 [1905], Gutenberg eBook #13944,
  • Deprived of motion by the blow of the club, it can, on the other hand, be picked up without trouble and without the aid of a dog, and if not dead is despatched by a twist of the Bushman's fingers or a thrust from his spud. The spud is at once his dagger, his knife and fork, his chisel, his grub-axe, and his gouge. It is a piece of iron (rarely or never of steel, for he does not know how to harden it) about ten inches long, an inch and a half wide at the top or broadest end, where it is shaped and sharpened like a chisel, only with the edge not straight but sloping, and from thence tapering to a point at the other, the pointed part being four-sided, like a nail.
  • "I rigged up a contraption to hold off those stinking beasts, and I spent a happy day there with a spud." [1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:]
  • A most respectable old Johnnie, don't you know. Doesn't do a thing nowadays but dig in the garden with a spud. [1925, P. G. Wodehouse, “Jeeves Takes Charge”, in Carry On, Jeeves, Arrow Books, published 2008, page 19:]
  • This spigot (spud) is used to support the lamp, and allows it to be turned from side to side. The spud fits into a socket in a bracket (receptable^([sic])) or a C-clamp. This fixture enables you to suspend the lighting fixture from an overhead bar […] [1991, Gerald Millerson, The Technique of Lighting for Television and Film, page 299:]

Etymology

From Middle English spudde (“small knife”). Origin unknown; probably related to Danish spyd, Old Norse spjót (“spear”), German Spieß (“spear; spike; skewer”). Compare English spit (“sharp, pointed rod”). The use of the term for a potato perhaps first appeared in New Zealand and Australian dialect and slang. See: Middle English Nouns 'spudde', Danish Nouns 'spyd', Old Norse Nouns 'spjót', German Nouns 'Spieß', English Nouns 'spit'.

Verbs referencing "spud"

English Nouns spod.