spur

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (2)  · 
While the city will take care of the utility needs of the new facility, the county and the Georgia Department of Transportation will make road improvements to handle the increased truck traffic and a spur will be added to the CSX railroad near the 130-acre site to accommodate the use of railroad service.

View all »
Definitions (82)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (17)

  1. noun A short spike or spiked wheel that attaches to the heel of a rider's boot and is used to urge a horse forward.
  2. noun Something that serves as a goad or incentive.
  3. noun A spurlike attachment or projection, as:

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (51)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (4)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (10)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (39)

  • Certainly it appears as if this spur is a sort of weapon, though the animal is of peaceful habits Before sleeping, the platypus curls round to keep itself warm, and brings the flattened tail over the back. —  Chatterbox, 1906
  • On these he remarked that "in Tropćolum the posterior part of the receptacle between the insertion of the petals and that of the stamens is dilated so as to form the spur which is so characteristic in the genus. —  Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants
  • You have taken the priceless spur--necessity--away from him, the spur which has goaded man to nearly all the great achievements in the history of the world You thought it a kindness to deprive yourself in order that your son might begin where you left off. —  Architects of Fate or, Steps to Success and Power
  • Before the war, all this spur was a smooth expanse, which passed in a sweep from the slope to the plateau, over this crown of summit To-day, the whole of the summit (which is called the Redan Ridge), for all its two hundred yards, is blown into pits and craters from twenty to fifty feet deep, and sometimes fifty yards long. —  The Old Front Line
  • Behind this enemy line is the bulk of the spur, which is partly white from up-blown chalk, partly burnt from months of fire, and partly faintly green from recovering grass. —  The Old Front Line
 

Tags

spur hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 128 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Suggestions Wordniks Suggest

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

ridge ·  crest ·  peak ·  belt ·  buckle ·  crag ·  sword ·  promontory ·  chain ·  dagger ·  whip ·  lance

Used in the same contextWord Family

spur:   spurs ·  spurring ·  spurred
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English spure, from Old English spura; see sperə- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Middle English spure, spore, from Anglo-Saxon spora, a spur (hand-spora, ‘hand-spur,’ talon), = Middle Dutch spore, Dutch spoor, a spur, also a track, = Middle Low German spore = Old High German sporo, Middle High German spore, spor, German sporn = Icelandic spori = Swedish sporre = Danish spore, spur (cf. Old French esporon, esperon, French éperon = Provencal espero = Old Spanish esporon, Spanish espolon = Portuguese esporão = Italian sperone, sprone (later English obsolete speron), also without the suffix, Old Spanish espuera, Spanish espuela = Portuguese espora, a spur, from Old High German sporo, accusative sporon); orig. ‘kicker,’ from its use on the heel; from the root of spurn, v. Cf. speer, spoor, speron, from the same ult. root.
  2. from Middle English sporen, sperren, sporien, spurien = Old High German sparōn, Middle High German sporen, sporn, German spornen = SW. sporra = Danish spore, spur; from the noun. Cf. Anglo-Saxon spyrian, spirian, sperian, etc., track, follow out, English speer: see speer.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/spər/
by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word a few times a week.

Recently looked up

devoted · latter · crusher · dapper · jolliness

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

wub wub · merch · these grunts every eight hours · haul it off to our darkest dungeon · send for a doctor