Sam Spade
"sam-spade" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Sam Spade” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A private detective.
Corpus desk
Index EN-sam-spade · Sam Spade · English
Sam Spade · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Sam Spade |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “Sam Spade” in English
Rare enough to double-check
Sam Spade is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A private detective.".
No misspelling variants are generated for Sam Spade in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is Sam Spade, spelled S-A-M- -S-P-A-D-E.
Definition
- 1A private detective.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how Sam Spade appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Congratulations on the detective work — a real Sam Spade job.
"To do a real Sam Spade, phone a bar near the resort. The ski bum who answers the phone will tell it as he sees it
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.