SHOVEL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Shovel

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/ʃˈəvəl/ Listen

noun

Shovel n. An implement consisting of a broad scoop, or more or less hollow blade, with a handle, used for lifting and throwing earth, coal, grain, or other loose substances.

Shovel hat, a broad-brimmed hat, turned up at the sides, and projecting in front like a shovel, worn by some clergy of the English Church. (Colloq.)

Shovelspur (Zool.), a flat, horny process on the tarsus of some toads, used in burrowing.

Steam shovel, a machine with a scoop or scoops, operated by a steam engine, for excavating earth, as in making railway cuttings.

verb

Shovel v. t. (past & past part. shoveled or shovelled; pres. part. shoveling or shovelling)

To take up and throw with a shovel; as, to shovel earth into a heap, or into a cart, or out of a pit.

To gather up as with a shovel.

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Etymology of 'Shovel'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Shovel" Quotes from Famous Books

... Portsmouth, where he dined with the admiral on board the ship Elizabeth, declared his intention of making him an earl in consideration of his good conduct and services, conferred the honour of knighthood on the captains Ashby and Shovel, and bestowed a donation of ten shillings on ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... burnt off about six feet above the surface, falling on a squatter's boundary fence, and leaving the ugliest kind of stump to occupy the selector's attention; which it did, for a week. He waited till the hole cooled, and then he went to work with pick, shovel, and axe: and even now he gets interested in drawings of machinery, such as are published in the agricultural weeklies, for getting out stumps without graft. He thought he would be able to get some posts and rails out of that tree, but found reason to think ...

— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... only a bit of the tangled jungle which must be cleared before the first American shovel could begin its work. For over twenty years a contest had been waged between experts in the United States as to the relative merits of the Panama and the Nicaragua routes. The latter was the more popular, perhaps because it seemed at one time that Panama was preempted by De Lesseps' French company. ...

— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... horn, a shovel, a pickaxe, his armor, and a dark lantern, and one winter's evening he went to the mount. There he dug a pit twenty-two feet deep and twenty broad. He covered the top over so as to make it look like solid ground. He then blew such a blast on his horn that the Giant awoke and came out of his ...

— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... the force of the draught along the hill-side, which would have caused too fierce a fire. At one side stood his hut of poles meeting in a cone, wrapped round with rough canvas. Besides his rake and shovel and a short ladder, he showed me a tool like an immense gridiron, bent half double, and fitted to a handle in the same way as a spade. This was for sifting charcoal when burned, and separating the small from the larger pieces. Every now and then a puff of smoke rose from the heap and ...

— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

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