Spadeworker

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One who does spadework, now especially in the figurative sense of preparatory work.

    "Like master like man. The peasants and artisans follow their neighbors; the spade-workers voting with Bismarck and Falkenstein, the hand-workers with Jacoby and Rosenkranz."

Example

More examples

"Like master like man. The peasants and artisans follow their neighbors; the spade-workers voting with Bismarck and Falkenstein, the hand-workers with Jacoby and Rosenkranz."

Etymology

From spadework + -er or spade + worker.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.