noun
General Slang
spake
· noun · welsh
Welsh mining wagon that ferried colliers in and out of the pit.
0
Definitions
1
A rail wagon used in Welsh collieries to carry miners down to the coalface and back out at the end of a shift. Pure South Wales pit vocab — if you worked the deep mines, the spake was your morning commute.
“Granddad rode the spake into Tower Colliery every morning for forty years.”
by community
0
2
Archaic past tense of 'speak' — 'and the Lord spake unto Moses' energy. Survives mainly in scripture, hymns and deliberately old-timey writing. Welsh pulpit oratory kept it alive long after the rest of English moved on.
“Then he spake, and the hall fell silent.”
by community
0
spake In A Sentence
Granddad rode the spake into Tower Colliery every morning for forty years.
Then he spake, and the hall fell silent.
Origin & Usage
Mining sense possibly a variant of 'spoke' (as in wheel/rail), specific to Welsh coalfields. Archaic verb sense is the original strong-past of 'speak'.
Variants
spakes
Comments 0