Word: spud Part of Speech: noun 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. Pronunciation: /spʌd/ 1. A potato. Labels: informal Example: 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[…] Example: 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. 2. A hole in a sock. Labels: informal Example: 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. Example: 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. 3. A type of short nut (fastener) threaded on both ends. Example: 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. Example: For removing or tightening radiator spud nut. 4. Anything short and thick. Labels: obsolete Example: 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 […] 5. A piece of dough boiled in fat. Labels: US, dialectal, obsolete 6. A testicle. Labels: plural-normally, slang 7. A dagger. Labels: obsolete 8. A digging fork with three broad prongs. 9. A tool, similar to a spade, used for digging out weeds etc. Example: 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. Example: 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. 10. A barking spud; a long-handled tool for removing bark from logs. 11. A movable post through a sleeve in the hull of a work barge to anchor it to the bottom of a body of water. 12. A short central rod in a lighting fixture, for attachment to the light. Example: 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 […]