shovel

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   dig with or as if with a shovel

   Shovel sand.

2. 2
   noun

   A hand tool with a handle, used for moving portions of material such as earth, snow, and grain from one place to another, with some forms also used for digging. In strict usage differentiated from a spade, which is designed solely for small-scale digging and incidental tasks such as chopping of small roots.

   It was said that such train crews kept a spare shovel on board because, on numerous occasions, the beginner had not only zealously thrown coal into the firebox but had let the shovel go as well.

3. 3
   noun

   Ellipsis of shovel hat.

   No one seems to like the offer, and the umpire is just coming down, when a queer old hat, something like a doctor of divinity's shovel, is chucked on to the stage […].

4. 4
   verb

   To move materials with a shovel.

   The workers were shovelling gravel and tarmac into the pothole in the road.

From Middle English schovele, schovel, showell, shole (> English dialectal shoul, shool), from Old English scofl (“shovel”), from Proto-Germanic *skuflō, *skūflō (“shovel”), equivalent to shove + -el (instrumental/agent suffix). Cognate with Scots shuffle, shule, shuil (“shovel”), Saterland Frisian Sköifel (“shovel”), West Frisian skoffel, schoffel (“hoe, spade, shovel”), Dutch schoffel (“spade, hoe”), Low German Schüfel, Schuffel (“shovel”), German Schaufel (“shovel”), Danish skovl (“shovel”), Faroese skupla (“shovel”), Icelandic skófla (“shovel”), Norwegian skyfle (“shovel”), skyffel (“shove...

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