Spoke
verbThe past tense of speak: to have uttered words or talked.
How to spell spoke
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce spoke
What does spoke mean?
- verbThe past tense of speak: to have uttered words or talked.
- nounOne of the rods connecting the hub of a wheel to its outer rim.
Spoke in a sentence
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verb
She spoke to the manager about the late delivery.
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noun
A single bent spoke made the bicycle wheel wobble badly.
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verb
He spoke calmly throughout the entire interview.
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noun
The mechanic tightened each spoke on the front wheel.
Where does spoke come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
"Spoke" actually covers two separate native English words that happen to be spelled and pronounced alike. The wheel sense comes from the Old English spaca, a word of Germanic origin meaning a rod or bar, related to the same family that gave Dutch speek and German Speiche; it has always named the slender rods that run from the hub of a wheel out to the rim. The verb sense is the past tense of "speak", which descends from the Old English sprecan, later specan, meaning to utter or talk; the older r-form survives in the related German sprechen. By the late medieval period English had dropped that r in everyday use, and the past tense settled into the modern "spoke" alongside the past participle "spoken". Because the word is short and phonetically regular, it carries almost no spelling trap, with the silent reading of the final e being its only mild feature.
How the word is built
- Old English spæc/spaca (rod of a wheel), or as the past tense of speak from sprecan/specan
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