spike
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: American-football
arts
ball-games
biology
botany
computing
crafts
engineering
entertainment
football
games
government
hobbies
journalism
lifestyle
lutherie
mathematics
media
microbiology
military
music
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
politics
sciences
software
sports
theater
virology
volleyball
war
zoology
Etymology: From Middle English spike, spyke, spik, from Old Norse spík (“spike, sprig”), from Proto-Germanic *spīkō (“stick, splinter, point”), from Proto-Indo-European *spey- (“to be pointed; sharp point, stick”). Cognate with Icelandic spík (“spike”), Swedish spik (“spike, nail”), Dutch spijker (“nail”), Old English spīcing (“spike”), and Latin spīca (“ear of corn”), which may have influenced some senses.
Inflected forms:
form: spikes
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: spikes
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: spiking
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: spiked
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: spiked
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A sort of very large nail.
pos: noun
gloss: A piece of pointed metal etc. set with points upward or outward.
pos: noun
examples: The trap was lined with spikes.
gloss: Anything resembling such a nail in shape.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
examples: He vvears on his head the Corona Radiata, vvhich at that time vvas another type of his Divinity. The ſpikes that ſhoot out from the crovvn vvere to repreſent the rays of the Sun.
gloss: An ear of corn or grain.
pos: noun
gloss: A kind of inflorescence in which sessile flowers are arranged on an unbranched elongated axis.
pos: noun
gloss: A running shoe with spikes in the sole to provide grip.
pos: noun
tags: in-plural
informal
gloss: A sharp peak in a graph.
pos: noun
gloss: A surge in power or in the price of a commodity, etc.; any sudden and brief change that would be represented by a sharp peak on a graph.
pos: noun
examples: If the border were shut down, consumers would most likely see an immediate spike in food prices, and supplies of fresh food could dwindle from grocery store shelves in a matter of days.
As well as the boom in off-peak leisure numbers, "there has been a big spike in passenger assistance - that's really taken off as well", he continues. "We're probably victims of our own success because we promote this more than we ever used to. We promote how accessible the railways are. I think that this area has more than doubled from pre-COVID levels.
gloss: The rod-like protrusion from a woman's high-heeled shoe that elevates the heel.
pos: noun
gloss: A long nail for storing papers by skewering them; (by extension) the metaphorical place where rejected newspaper articles are sent.
pos: noun
examples: It was all true, it appeared. He sat down and wrote it, the editor read it and said: ' We don't use stories like this in this newspaper.' So the story ended up on the spike, reinforcing the principle that wife-swapping, unlike justice, must not be seen to be done.
Later I was entrusted with writing the letters to the editor, because nobody else ever wrote to our paper. The editor, Eric Lewis, had a slash and burn style of editing that left its mark on me forever. Most of my stories ended up on the spike.
Assuming that word of the death reached the Times's newsroom at all, it would have taken little more than one bleary-eyed night editor who had heard neither of Ventris nor of linear B for the obituary to have been consigned to the spike.
gloss: An attack from, usually, above the height of the net performed with the intent to send the ball straight to the floor of the opponent or off the hands of the opposing block.
pos: noun
gloss: An adolescent male deer.
pos: noun
gloss: The casual ward of a workhouse.
pos: noun
tags: historical
slang
examples: Dere's tay spikes, and cocoa spikes, and skilly spikes.
gloss: Spike lavender.
pos: noun
examples: oil of spike
gloss: Synonym of endpin.
pos: noun
gloss: A mark indicating where a prop or other item should be placed on stage.
pos: noun
examples: Sometimes actors set props on the spikes, or sometimes a deckhand will do it, depending on the action of the play.
gloss: A small project that uses the simplest possible program to explore potential solutions.
pos: noun
examples: An architectural spike is used to prove that a specific technical approach works. Teams will often do an architectural spike when they have a few different options for designing a specific technical solution, or if they don't know if a certain approach will work.
gloss: An excessively high church Anglican.
pos: noun
examples: Here we see an Anglo-Catholic spike cocking a snook at authority, getting away with it, and probably exercising an important liturgical and sacramental ministry – at least by his own lights – to some of the troops on the Western Front.
gloss: a structure projecting from the surface of an enveloped virus, which binds to host cells.
pos: noun
gloss: To fasten with spikes, or long, large nails.
pos: verb
examples: to spike down planks
gloss: To set or furnish with spikes.
pos: verb
gloss: To embed nails into (a tree) so that any attempt to cut it down will damage equipment or injure people.
pos: verb
gloss: To fix on a spike.
pos: verb
examples: He spiked the story on the “dead” hook and answered his interphone.
Better known as Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), he spiked his victims on stakes arranged in geometric patterns and accorded each a high or low spear, according to his or her rank.
gloss: To discard; to decide not to publish or make public.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
examples: Nicolaas, or Nick, as the family called him, wanted to turn professional but an ear injury, sustained during the war, spiked his plans.
Instead, the "Beaver" declared he would spike the story about Wallis Simpson and make sure his fellow media moguls sat on it too.
Anyway, on this day I was still struggling with how to use fewer than twenty words to sum up my day in Blackpool in a manner which would not prove too upsetting for my parents, when I learned that I'd got spiked. Again.
With two such wildly contradictory versions of why and how NBC News spiked Farrow’s Weinstein story, it’s difficult to determine what objectively occurred.
Last October, Bezos halted the Post’s practice of endorsing presidential candidates, spiking the editorial board’s plans to endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the general election.
gloss: To increase sharply.
pos: verb
examples: Traffic accidents spiked in December when there was ice on the roads.
2017, Jennifer S. Holland, For These Monkeys, It’s a Fight for Survival., National Geographic (March 2017)http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/03/macaques-monkeys-indonesia-endangered-pet-trade/
But the bigger threat is that people in Sulawesi have been eating macaque meat for centuries. Today it goes for about two dollars a pound (an adult macaque weighs 18 to 23 pounds), and demand spikes at holidays.
gloss: To add alcohol or a drug into a drink, especially if covertly.
pos: verb
examples: She spiked my lemonade with vodka!
I asked him what was happening, and if it was all me, and he laughed and held me very close and told me that the Kool-Aid had been ‘spiked’ and that I was just beginning my first LSD experience…
She'd sit by the fire, arms crossed, demanding that Ruby spike her tea with a cinder. But Ruby would never give in to her demands, no matter how much her mam begged. There was no alcohol in the house now; Arthur had made sure of that in an effort to get Mary sober.
gloss: To add a small amount of one substance to another.
pos: verb
examples: The water sample to be tested has been spiked with arsenic, antimony, mercury, and lead in quantities commonly found in industrial effluents.
gloss: To attack from, usually, above the height of the net with the intent to send the ball straight to the floor of the opponent or off the hands of the opposing block.
pos: verb
gloss: To render (a gun) unusable by driving a metal spike into its touch hole.
pos: verb
examples: He jumped down, wrenched the hammer from the armourer's hand, and seizing a nail from the bag, in a few moments he had spiked the gun.
Small skirmishes also took place, and the Afghans managed to seize a pair of mule-guns and force the British to spike and abandon two other precious guns.
gloss: To slam the football to the ground, usually in celebration of scoring a touchdown, or to stop expiring time on the game clock after snapping the ball as to save time for the losing team to attempt to score the tying or winning points.
pos: verb
tags: slang
examples: to spike the football
“No one is spiking the football yet,” Mr. Kahl said.
gloss: To inject a drug with a syringe.
pos: verb
tags: slang
Derived words: aerospike
antispike
backspike
butt spike
chickenspike
despike
dogspike
dog spike
golden spike
handspike
interspike
intraspike
liberty spike
marline spike
marling spike
marlinspike
marlin spike
microspike
minispike
multispike
nanospike
oil of spike
polyspike
prespike
railroad spike
rail spike
road spikes
spignel
spike addition
spike attack
spikebill
spike bug
spike camp
spike fiddle
spikefish
spikegrass
spike heath
spike heel
spikehorn
spike-in
spikeless
spikelet
spikelike
spike lute
spike moss
spikenail
spikenard
spike oil
spike plank
spike poison
spike-primrose
spikeproof
spike protein
spiker
spikery
spike strip
spiketail
spike team
spike train
spikewise
superspike
track spike
traffic spikes
unspike
voltage spike
yellowspike orchid
spike a temp
spike a temperature
spike someone's guns
spike up
Translations: