In Spades Meaning and Origin

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha. This is Paul McDowell from South Bend, Indiana.

Hey, Paul. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, thank you so much. Well, I’m so delighted to be speaking with you both.

My question is about the etymology of the expression in spades. It’s not an expression that I use very often or that I hear very often, but I used it recently.

My son and I have lunch every day together, and he graduated with a degree in linguistics from Ohio State. So we often have conversations over lunch that are linguistically oriented. We’re both definitely word nerds, no doubt about that.

So in spades, any ideas that you can share with me?

Yes. As a matter of fact, we have a bunch of ideas, but the best one is, have you ever played Bridge? The card game Bridge.

No, I’ve not, Grant. I have not.

That’s where it comes from. In the 1920s, a hundred years ago, in the 1930s, Bridge was huge. It was this enormous fad. Bridge columns started appearing in newspapers, books about Bridge. People would speak on Bridge. Huge Bridge tournaments. It was the thing that you did when you went over to somebody else’s house. You played bridge.

And there were other games too, like whist and scat, S-K-A-T, that were similar. But because of that, some of the bridge language crept into English. And in this particular case, coming up spades, or to be in spades, is that term. And spades are an important card to have. It’s the most powerful suit of cards in the game bridge. And this is the black kind of silhouette of the pointy end of a kind of a stylized spade, like you would dig in the ground. So it looks like the metal scoop part of the implement.

And you can read these old columns in books and newspapers. And they talk about, you know, I thought we were, I didn’t have a chance. But then I saw that my partner was in spades. And it’s kind of the same in, as we would say, in bloom or in stock, meaning something is happening where there’s a lot of it or it’s all present.

That’s all very interesting. I figured it had to be either in the context of carts or gardening. So that’s really great. Thank you for sharing that answer with me. That’s really interesting, and I can’t thank you enough for taking my call.

Well, Paul, we hope that you will give our best to your son. Maybe he’ll call sometime with a question or comment as well.

Well, I’ll pass that on to him. Thank you, Paul.

Okay. Take care.

Thank you both. Bye-bye.

All right. Take care. Bye-bye now.

Well, if you have a question about language, we have answers in spades. So give us a call, 877-929-9673.