What's the difference between spade and spate?

Spade


Definition:

  • (n.) A hart or stag three years old.
  • (n.) A castrated man or beast.
  • (n.) An implement for digging or cutting the ground, consisting usually of an oblong and nearly rectangular blade of iron, with a handle like that of a shovel.
  • (n.) One of that suit of cards each of which bears one or more figures resembling a spade.
  • (n.) A cutting instrument used in flensing a whale.
  • (v. t.) To dig with a spade; to pare off the sward of, as land, with a spade.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Time, to use a good Anglo-Saxon expression, to call a spade a spade.
  • (2) Before you take out your bucket and spade, though, you might like to look at the sand sculpture festival (until 5 September; prices vary from day to day) for inspiration.
  • (3) The first, the 28A region, gave three recessive lethals and also contains three known visible mutants, spade (spd), Sternopleural (Sp) and wingless (wg); a complex pattern of genetic interaction in the region incorporates both the new and the previously known mutants.
  • (4) This was greeted by a furious wall of sound from Labour, which only grew when he added: "The last government failed to prioritise compassionate care … they tried to shut down the whistleblowers …" It was pure party-political point-scoring, matched in spades by Labour's Andy Burnham.
  • (5) The entertainment industry's reliance on the courts for a cheap and dirty fix to all its problems has mutated filesharing into a strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that has no one to sue except for individual filesharers (and the most avid music filesharers are also the most avid music everything – CD buyers, concertgoers, bootleg collectors … When you live your life for music, you do everything musical in spades).
  • (6) Apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is characterized by a spade-like left ventricular cavity and by both giant negative T waves and tall R waves in the electrocardiogram.
  • (7) After one year, attempted removal of the spade tipped K-wire was unsuccessful.
  • (8) "Any fool can spend money; Gordon Brown has proved that in spades.
  • (9) Our two cases of trisomy 12p (ter leads to 12.1) were compared with eight cases of trisomy 12p described earlier, and the following common characteristics were found: severe mental and physical retardation; flat and round, broad face with prominent cheeks; flat and broad nasal bridge with short nose; anteverted nostrils and large philtrum; broad and prominent lower lip; low-set or slanting ears, poorly formed with folded helix, prominent antihelix and deep concha; short neck; short sternum; "spade"-shaped fingers, the fifth being short; bilateral genu valgum; bilateral pes planus and talus valgus; increased space between the first and second toes; generalized hypotonia; and certain dermatoglyphic characteristics.
  • (10) When will spades be called spades and retreats retreats?
  • (11) Commuting back and forth across the Atlantic has taken its toll but paid off in spades, first with gold and silver in Daegu and now the 10,000m Olympic title.
  • (12) Little documented, the scene was caught by Colin MacInnes in his 1957 novel City of Spades, whose hero is a West African hustler called Johnny Fortune.
  • (13) Republicans stake their claim as Christie stresses credentials at CPAC Read more The 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference was in full swing, and at the end of Thursday afternoon, the crowd got what it had come for, in spades: three searing speeches from the main stage razzing President Barack Obama, damning “radical Islamic terrorism” and celebrating the United States as the best place on Earth in history.
  • (14) These and other problems identified by the PAC apply in spades to mass contracting by CCGs, which are even less capable of managing contracts than central government departments.
  • (15) Osborne's first spade in the ground was on work at the station for Manchester airport, the UK's third biggest airport.
  • (16) Another notable Britpop item was the cassingle version of Elastica's Waking Up, designed by Jon Anonymous: made up like a packet of cards, with a spade cut out of the front, it had a band member trading card inside.
  • (17) The spade-like configuration was also seen in four cases (7.0%) of the GNT- group.
  • (18) Every reason people in the UK might have not to vote, Nigerians also have, in spades.
  • (19) Bagolini and Ioli-Spade in 1968 presented a 30 year follow-up on Bietti's cases and presented six additional cases.
  • (20) In the 9 patients who had cardiac catheterization the left ventricular end-diastolic pressure was raised, and angiography showed an "ace of spades" diastolic image of the left ventricle with systolic obliteration of its tip.

Spate


Definition:

  • (n.) A river flood; an overflow or inundation.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In recent years, a spate of health care reform proposals have emerged on the American agenda.
  • (2) The processing centre been seized by more than a month of daily protests, as well as a spate of suicide attempts over the last 48 hours.
  • (3) The year since Jo Cox’s death has seen rapid political change around the world: unexpected election results, a rise in digital interference in democratic elections by foreign powers , and a spate of appalling terrorist attacks.
  • (4) There has been a spate of thefts of rhino horns and elephant tusks from European museums, zoos and auction houses in recent years, amid a rising illegal trade in poached or stolen ivory .
  • (5) A spate of suicides by employees of an electronics giant in China has fuelled concern about the pressures of factory life and the emotional vulnerability of young employees.
  • (6) Angry demonstrations over the government’s refusal to relieve Kobani , the Syrian canton under siege from the brutal group calling itself Islamic State (Isis), led to a spate of deaths.
  • (7) A series of measures have been brought in since the December attack aimed at making women safer, but despite these, there has been a spate of attacks on women in Delhi since the beginning of March, including four reported assaults on girls under 18.
  • (8) Rosenberg agreed, pointing out that the spate of bad news was falling at a critical time in the election cycle, when senior politicians had to finally decide whether to throw their hat in the ring.
  • (9) An estimate is made of the frequency and effects of spates.
  • (10) The service has been hit by a spate of station closures over the past 18 months, including TheJazz, OneWord, Core and Capital Life.
  • (11) It's the first interview he's done since his marriage and divorce and the split-up of the Ordinary Boys, and it all comes rushing out in a spate, a tangle of chronological confusions and jokes, and groans when I quote some of his old interviews back at him, and statements of contrition, and digressions about Dawkins or whatever, and here's the confounding thing - he's really nothing like I was expecting, not indie-boy sulky, or attempting to play it cool, he's just talkative and engaging, and he has a sense of humour about himself that, from reading his previous interviews, I wouldn't have even guessed at.
  • (12) Calls are mounting for hardline Jewish settlers to be classified as terrorists after a spate of attacks on Palestinian property in the West Bank and Israel , and threats of violence towards Israeli soldiers.
  • (13) As in journals elsewhere there followed a spate of articles reporting various aspects of cocaine and its usage, including an abortive attempt to find an alternative agent.
  • (14) Merkel’s office has not commented on her dictionary nomination so far, though they might arguably have been able to insist the word was rude or discriminatory, on the same grounds that the nominated word “Alpha Kevin”, meaning the “thickest person of all” was removed from Langenscheidt list, after a reported spate of complaints from people called Kevin, or their parents.
  • (15) Shirin Ebadi , the Iranian Nobel peace prizewinner, joined human rights organisations in February this year in appealing to Iran to impose a moratorium on executions – but after a brief pause following a spate of adverse international publicity, the pace of judicial killings has accelerated again.
  • (16) A spate of US companies have sought acquisitions in the UK and elsewhere this year to gain a lower rate of corporation tax.
  • (17) The coalition's radical shake-up of the planning system was designed to unleash a spate of new housebuilding.
  • (18) The chair of the Senate subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law wrote to the company last month setting out ten questions after a spate of incidents that he said indicated a “troubling disregard for customers’ privacy”.
  • (19) "A toxic mix of gold, greed and alcohol has resulted in a spate of brutal murders in the interior," the newspaper reported, cataloguing killings involving miners, jewellers and shopkeepers working at the gold mines.
  • (20) Donald Trump has made the most direct appeal of his campaign to African American voters as he battles to offset dismal polling among black voters and draw political capital from a recent spate of racially charged unrest in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.