spud
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /spʌd/
enpr: spŭd
rhymes: -ʌd
Forms: form: spuds
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.
Senses: examples: text: 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[…]
ref: 1927 May, Boys' Life, page 8:
text: 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.
ref: 1981, Colin Welland, Chariots of Fire, spoken by Rev. J.D. Liddell:
glosses: A potato.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1958, Michael Kennedy Joseph, I'll Soldier No More: A Novel:
text: 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.
ref: 1990, Ray Salisbury, Sweet Thursday: A Novel:
text: 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.
ref: 2000, Christopher Nolan, The Banyan Tree: A Novel:
text: (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)
ref: 2007, Trevor Griffiths, “Sam, Sam”, in Theatre Plays One:
glosses: A hole in a sock.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2003, Rick Peters, Plumbing Basics, →ISBN, page 103:
text: For removing or tightening radiator spud nut.
ref: 2011, Steve Ettlinger, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Everything Sold in Hardware Stores, →ISBN:
topics: business
construction
manufacturing
plumbing
glosses: A type of short nut (fastener) threaded on both ends.
examples: text: 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 […]
ref: 1844, Richard Sainthill, An Olla Podrida: Or, Scraps, Numismatic, Antiquarian, and Literary:
glosses: Anything short and thick.
glosses: A piece of dough boiled in fat.
glosses: A testicle.
glosses: A dagger.
glosses: A digging fork with three broad prongs.
examples: text: 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.
text: 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.
text: "I rigged up a contraption to hold off those stinking beasts, and I spent a happy day there with a spud."
ref: 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
text: A most respectable old Johnnie, don't you know. Doesn't do a thing nowadays but dig in the garden with a spud.
ref: 1925, P. G. Wodehouse, “Jeeves Takes Charge”, in Carry On, Jeeves, Arrow Books, published 2008, page 19:
glosses: A tool, similar to a spade, used for digging out weeds etc.
glosses: A barking spud; a long-handled tool for removing bark from logs.
glosses: A movable post through a sleeve in the hull of a work barge to anchor it to the bottom of a body of water.
examples: text: 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 […]
ref: 1991, Gerald Millerson, The Technique of Lighting for Television and Film, page 299:
topics: broadcasting
film
media
television
glosses: A short central rod in a lighting fixture, for attachment to the light.
Derived terms: bark spud
love spud
sofa spud
spud-bashing
spud bashing
Spudboy
spud cocky
spudger
spud gun
spud head
spudless
spudlike
spud washer