Spades

form one of the four suits of

playing cards A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a f ...

in the standard

French deck French-suited playing cards or French-suited cards are cards that use the French suits of (clovers or clubs ), (tiles or diamonds ), (hearts ), and (pikes or spades ). Each suit contains three or four face/court cards. I ...

. It is the same shape as the

leaf A leaf ( : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, ste ...

symbol in German-suited cards but looks like a black

heart The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide to t ...

turned upside down with a stalk at its base. It symbolises the

pike Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to: Fish * Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus'' * Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes * ''Esox'', genus of ...

halberd A halberd (also called halbard, halbert or Swiss voulge) is a two-handed pole weapon that came to prominent use during the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The word ''halberd'' is cognate with the German word ''Hellebarde'', deriving from ...

, two medieval weapons. In French the suit of Spades is known as the ''Pique'' and in German as the ''Pik''. It corresponds to the suit of Leaves Bay gras

(''Laub'', ''Grün'', ''Schippen'' or, in

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

, ''Gras'') in the German suited playing cards. In Switzerland, the suit is known as ''Schuufle'' ("

shovel A shovel is a tool used for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials, such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or ore. Most shovels are hand tools consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovel blades are usually made o ...

") and in many German regions, e.g. the

Rhineland The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section. Term Historically, the Rhinelands ...

as ''Schüppe/Schippe'' ("shovel"). In

Bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

, Spades rank as the highest suit. In Skat and similar games, it is the second-highest suit.

Name

The French name for this suit, '' pique'' ("pike"), meant, in the 14th century, a weapon formed by an iron spike placed at the end of a

. For playing cards, the term may have been coined by analogy with the Latin symbol from which it is derived, the sword. In other languages, the term is usually derived from ''pique'': german: Pik, es, picas, ro, pică, russian: пики, cs, piky, it, picche etc. Sometimes it is an adaptation of "sword", hence the English name, Spades, and the

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

''espadas''.

Characteristics

The spade symbol is a very stylized spearhead shape, pointing upwards, the bottom widening into two arcs of a circle and sweeping towards the centre to then form a sort of foot. Generally, spades are

black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ...

. They form one of the two major suits in

(with Hearts). In the official Skat tournament deck, spades are

green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combi ...

, assuming the color of their German-deck equivalent. The following gallery shows the spades in a

52-card deck The standard 52-card deck of French-suited playing cards is the most common pack of playing cards used today. In English-speaking countries it is the only traditional pack used for playing cards; in many countries of the world, however, it is used ...

French playing cards French-suited playing cards or French-suited cards are cards that use the French suits of (clovers or clubs ), (tiles or diamonds ), (hearts ), and (pikes or spades ). Each suit contains three or four face/court cards. I ...

. Not shown is the

Knight of Spades A knight or cavalier is a playing card with a picture of a man riding a horse on it. It is a standard face or court card in Italian and Spanish packs where it is usually referred to as the 'knight' in English, the ''caballo'' in Spanish or the ' ...

used in

Tarot card games Tarot games are card games played with tarot decks, that is, decks with numbered permanent Trump (card games), trumps parallel to the Playing card suit, suit cards. The games and decks which English-speakers call by the French name Tarot are cal ...

: File:01 of spades A.svg,

Ace An ace is a playing card, die or domino with a single pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the c ...

File:02 of spades.svg, 2 File:03 of spades.svg, 3 File:04 of spades.svg, 4 File:05 of spades.svg, 5 File:06 of spades.svg, 6 File:07 of spades.svg, 7 File:08 of spades.svg, 8 File:09 of spades.svg, 9 File:10 of spades - David Bellot.svg, 10 File:Jack of spades fr.svg, Jack File:Queen of spades fr.svg,

Queen Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...

File:King of spades fr.svg,

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

Four-colour packs

Four-colour packs are sometimes used in tournaments or online. In four-colour packs Spades may be: * black Naipe espadas

in English Bridge and Poker packs and French and Swiss four-colour packs, * green SuitSpades4colors

in German Skat tournament packs''Gallery 3 - Sizes, Shapes and Colours''
at a_pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved 4 Aug 2020. or * blue Suitspadesblue

in some American Poker decks.

Coding

The symbol ♠ is already in the computer code set CP437 and therefore also part of Windows WGL4. In

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

a black ♠ and a white ♤ Spade are defined:

References

Literature

* Allan, Elkan and Hannah Mackay (2007). ''The Poker Encyclopedia''. London: Portico. {{Playing card Card suits da:Spar (kulør)