Spadger
noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A sparrow. colloquial, dialectal
"Genuine cockney ‘spadgers’ have appeared at Bulli. The little hoppers are spreading rapidly all over the colony."
- 2 A boy. colloquial
"He laughs and says, “My, you sure talk brash, for such a little spadger.”"
Example
More examples"Genuine cockney ‘spadgers’ have appeared at Bulli. The little hoppers are spreading rapidly all over the colony."
Etymology
Originally British dialect (1850s), from spadge (fronted variant of northern dialect spag) + -er. The northern dialect term spag is a derhoticised form of Scots spurg (“sparrow”), from spur (from Old Norse spǫrr (“sparrow”), suffixless cognate of Old English spearwa) + diminutive suffix -ock, with loss of vowel and voicing of -k to -g after r.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.