Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In oil-well drilling, a method of handling the rope and tools by which the first fifty or sixty feet of an oil-well are bored by the aid of the bull-wheel, the depth not being sufficient to allow of the use of the working-beam for that purpose.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun drilling The initial drilling of a well; a test drilling.
  • verb Present participle of spud.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • BP today started drilling - or "spudding" - a new relief well half a mile away from the site of the Deepwater Horizon.

    Latest financial, market & economic news and analysis | guardian.co.uk 2010

  • Where else can you do cool science while also being a macho Marlbor man: wearing blue jeans, driving jeeps, spudding in oil wells while shooting Beduin bandits…

    The 1992 Chavez Coup « Climate Audit 2005

  • Miss Prosody, quite genial and urbane after luncheon, was deep in consultation with the boatman as to the locality of certain ferns she proposed spudding up for her pet rockery at "The Maples," where her lighter hours were diurnally spent in washing and tending her spoils.

    Bluebell A Novel Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

  • Cambridge cream cheese: then a ride over hill and dale: then spudding up some weeds from the grass: and then, coming in, I sit down to write to you, my sister winding red worsted from the back of a chair, and the most delightful little girl in the world chattering incessantly.

    The Bed-Book of Happiness Harold Begbie 1900

  • Hugh used to trot about with him, spudding up weeds from the lawn.

    Hugh Memoirs of a Brother Arthur Christopher Benson 1893

  • But for his extravagance, and the misfortunes he had brought upon them, her old general would be alive still -- pottering about in the spring sunshine, spudding the daisies from the turf, or smoking his pipe beneath the thickening trees.

    Lady Rose's Daughter Humphry Ward 1885

  • On reaching the churchyard and turning the corner towards the spot as usual, she was surprised to perceive another woman, also apparently a respectable widow, and with a tiny boy by her side, bending over Clark's turf, and spudding up with the point of her umbrella some ivy-roots that

    A Changed Man; and other tales Thomas Hardy 1884

  • One evening when he was thus standing in the garden, abstractedly spudding up a weed with his stick, a bony figure turned the corner of the house and came up to him.

    The Return of the Native 1878

  • It might have seemed at first as though the future railway engineer was going to settle down quietly to the useful but uneventful life of an agricultural labourer; for from tending cows he proceeded in due time (with a splendid advance of twopence) to leading the horses at the plough, spudding thistles, and hoeing turnips on his employer's farm.

    Biographies of Working Men Grant Allen 1873

  • Naturally, to such a boy, the great ambition of his life was to be released from the hoeing and spudding, and set to work at his father's colliery.

    Biographies of Working Men Grant Allen 1873

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