Chiefly dial. [app. f. SPADE sb.1, but perh. for spaude- or spalde-bone: see SPAULD.] The shoulder-blade.

1

1612.  Drayton, Poly-olb., v. 266. A diuination strange…, By th’ shoulder of a Ram,… Which vsuallie they boile, the spade-boane beeing bar’d.

2

1671.  Skinner, Etymol. Ling. Angl., Spade-bone, vox agro Lincoln. usitatissima.

3

1790.  W. H. Marshall, Rur. Econ. Midl., II. 443. Spade-bone; the shoulder bone; the blade bone.

4

1823–.  in dial. glossaries (chiefly northern and eastern).

5

1844.  Borrow, in W. I. Knapp, Life (1899), I. 394. Mahomet,… it is said, wrote his Coran on mutton spade bones.

6