Other forms: shovels, shoveling, shoveled, shovelling, shovelled
A shovel is the broad digging tool for lifting earth and snow. A wide blade with sides, and a long handle.
The difference from a spade is real, since a spade has a flat blade for cutting into ground and a shovel has a curved one for scooping and moving. Most people use the words interchangeably anyway. It works as a verb, so you shovel snow, and figuratively you shovel food into your mouth when in a hurry. A steam shovel and a mechanical digger do the same job on a larger scale.
1nounshovelA tool with a broad curved blade for lifting loose material.
“He fetched a shovel and cleared the path.”
2verbmoveTo move material with a shovel, or to move it hastily.
“They shovelled snow away from the door.”
Also accepted in games: spade
A shovel is a shover. Old English scofl is the verb shove with an instrument ending stuck on it, so the tool is named for the thing you do with it.
Middle English
schovele
English, today
shovel
Built from
From Middle English schovele. 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. Cognate with Scots shuffle, shule, shuil (“shovel”), stq 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 (“shovel, hoe”), Swedish skyffel, skovel (“shovel”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA