Spud
name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A potato. informal
"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[…]"
- 2 a sharp hand shovel for digging out roots and weeds wordnet
- 3 A hole in a sock. informal
"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."
- 4 an edible tuber native to South America; a staple food of Ireland wordnet
- 5 A type of short nut (fastener) threaded on both ends.
"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."
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- 6 Anything short and thick. obsolete
"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 […]"
- 7 A piece of dough boiled in fat. US, dialectal, obsolete
- 8 A testicle. plural-normally, slang
- 9 A dagger. obsolete
- 10 A digging fork with three broad prongs.
- 11 A tool, similar to a spade, used for digging out weeds etc.
"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."
- 12 A barking spud; a long-handled tool for removing bark from logs.
- 13 A movable post through a sleeve in the hull of a work barge to anchor it to the bottom of a body of water.
- 14 A short central rod in a lighting fixture, for attachment to the light.
"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 […]"
- 1 To dig up weeds with a spud. transitive
"There was thistle-spudding all over the Marsh; an army of thistles, an army of spudders."
- 2 produce buds, branches, or germinate wordnet
- 3 To begin drilling an oil well; to drill by moving the drill bit and shaft up and down, or by raising and dropping a bit. transitive
"A rope called the jerk line is attached to the wrist pin of the band-wheel crank, brought inside the derrick, and attached to the part of the drilling cable which extends from the crown pulley to the bull-wheel shaft by a curved metal slide called a spudding shoe. (See fig. 8.)"
- 4 initiate drilling operations, as for petroleum wordnet
- 5 To remove the roofing aggregate and most of the bituminous top coating by scraping and chipping. transitive
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- 6 To set up a recreational vehicle (RV) at a campsite, typically by leveling the RV and connecting it to electric, water, or sewer hookups. transitive
- 1 A game for three or more players, involving the gradual elimination of players by throwing and catching a ball.
Example
More examples"In his tavern The Spud Inn, Tom offers a wide range of potato dishes."
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.
Related phrases
More for "spud"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.