Spake
adj, name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Alternative form of spoke (of a wheel). Scotland, alt-of, alternative
- 2 A type of wagon on rails used for carrying workers in and out of a colliery. Wales
- 1 simple past of speak archaic, form-of, past
"And God ſpake vnto Noah, ſaying, / Goe foorth of the Arke, thou, and thy wife, and thy ſonnes, and thy ſonnes wiues with thee:[…]"
- 1 Quiet; tame. obsolete
- 2 Ready; prompt. obsolete
- 1 A surname.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"The Prince did not know what to believe, and presently a very aged countryman spake to him thus:— "May it please your royal Highness, more than fifty years since I heard from my father that there was then in this castle the most beautiful princess that was ever seen; that she must sleep there a hundred years, and that she should be waked by a king's son, for whom she was reserved.""
Etymology
From Middle English spake, spak, from Old Norse spakr (“wise, gentle, quiet”), from Proto-Germanic *spakaz (“wise, clever”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peǵ- (“to understand; intelligent, attentive”). Cognate with Swedish spak (“manageable”), Danish spag (“quiet, gentle, timid, tame”).
From Middle English spak, from Old English spæc, first and third person singular past tense of specan (“to speak”). More at speak.
Alternative form.
Uncertain. Possibly a variant of spoke, which has a variety of extended senses in English dialects and in Scots (including a tree branch or cutting, a windmill's arm, a birdcage's perch, and a bar for carrying a coffin), though none closely matching this.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.