Last time I mentioned/warned you that this time I’d be discussing the difference between a spade and a shovel. Yup, it’s time to call a spade a spade and a shovel a shovel or as the ancient Greeks said, “call a fig a fig.” No, seriously, the idiom started with the classical Greek work Apophthegmata Laconica by Plutarch. He also used the idiom, “call a trough a trough,” but in Greek, not English.
This wasn’t picked up in the English language until 1542 when Nicolas Udall translated Apophthegmes from the Greek to English and replaced the word “fig” with “spade.” I’m not sure what the reason for the substitution was — maybe 16th century England had more spades than figs. Anyway, we all know that the whole, “call a spade a spade,” idiom is about speaking frankly, directly and truthfully about a subject. It has been used by many well know writers like Oscar Wilde, Dickens and Emerson. I did a search of my blog writings and turns out I’ve never used this idiom.
Maybe that’s why I’m not as popular a writer as Charles Dickens.
But I digress … we came here today to discuss differences. Yes, I know, in this divided world of ours we should be focusing on our similarities — those things that bind us, not separate us. That’s not happening today.
The simple fact, despite advertising from the big box garden centers, is that a spade is different from a shovel. Both are tools and in common speech are often referred to as being the same. Spades are often sold as shovels and shovels often used as spades. I’ll also admit that many people don’t even know what a spade is and just call all digging/shoveling tools shovels.
So let’s just clear this up, a spade is a metal tool with a sharp blade that is used for cutting into soil and used for digging. The end can be either a pointed spade like shape (as in the spade suit in a deck of cards) or a flat square shape or even a pointy triangle. The tool is used for doing things like cutting through roots, turf, and hard soils, to create a hole. A spade often has treading piece or a place to put your foot on the back of the tool to help push it into the ground. It can have a long or short handle. I’ve noted that tall people like long handles and short people like short handles. I don’t know why.
On the other side is a shovel which is used to move lose materials like dirt, snow or coal from one place to another. You shovel snow off your driveway. A pile of dirt is shoveled into a wheelbarrow while few people shovel coal anymore. Don’t confuse a coal scuttle with a coal shovel. A scuttle holds a small amount of coal that can be carried from the coal pile in the basement to the stove where it is used. A coal shovel fills the scuttle.
Not that I’ve ever shoveled or transported coal, but I’ve heard stories.
So again, the difference isn’t the shape or size, but the function. If it cuts, digs or makes holes, it’s a spade. If it just moves things around, it’s a shovel. Some times you can use a spade to shovel, but a shovel generally makes a poor spade. If you go to the garden center, they won’t care what you call it as long as you pay your $29.99 to buy one.
I should point out that your common hand trowel or garden trowel is just a small spade that can be used as a mini shovel. Don’t confuse this kind of trowel with a masonry tool that spreads brick mortar or drywall compound. And don’t step on a garden trowel, you’ll either break it or injure yourself. I’ve done both and neither are easy to explain to your wife.
I personally own a couple types of spades. One is the standard American round spade with a long handle. It’s useful for general digging like planting trees. Then I have a trenching tool, which is just a narrow blade with a triangle pointed end. It’s about six inches wide and great for digging irrigation trenches. I also have a turf edger that cuts through lawn that could technically be called a spade, as it cuts and digs, but it doesn’t shovel at all.
My shovel collection includes a few snow shovels and a couple of square faced square flat shovels that are about nine inches wide that I use for moving dirt from one end of the garden to the other. That’s the problem when you dig a hole, you often end up with a pile of dirt that needs to be moved. It’s common for me to have three tools when I’m out digging stuff in the yard – my round spade, trenching tool and my flat shovel along with a wheelbarrow, bandana, water bottle, band-aids and my cell phone just in case things are really going wrong and I sever something other than a root.
I should point out that the soil in my yard is very rock like and with a lot of clay so digging often requires a large steel digging bar that’s about six feet long to convince the soil to break up. While this is used for cutting and digging, I don’t call it a spade.
I just call it heavy.
Andrew's View of the Week 