Spudde

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A short, narrow digging tool with a flat blade, used for cutting out weeds ; to loosen or remove something by digging it up with such a tool
2. An old-fashioned narrow spade for cutting out roots and weeds ; to uproot or lift plants by digging them out with that kind of implement
3. A narrow-bladed hand spade used for grubbing up weeds ; to dig out or cut away plants and their roots with a tool of this sort

Etymology: "Spudde" is the Middle English spelling of what became modern "spud," and its earliest sense was a short, broad-bladed tool, a kind of knife or spade used for digging out weeds and roots. Its ancestry is unclear. Scholars have not settled on a source, and no reliable older form in English or a related language explains it, so any claim of a clear inherited root would be guesswork. The potato sense came much later. The tuber's nickname grew out of the tool's old use, since a spud was the implement used to dig up such crops. The shift from a digging implement to a food plant is a case of a tool's name passing to the thing it was used on.