What do you hold a shovel with? 
A crew is digging up a work site next to a convent. One day, the Mother Superior comes out to talk to the supervisor.
“Excuse me sir, do you think there’s any way you could ask your men to tone down their behavior? We have many nuns here who are not used to such salty language.”
“I’m sorry Mother Superior. I’ll do what I can, but you must understand these are simple, rough, working class men. They call a spade a spade.”
“But that’s the problem! They don’t call it a spade, they call it a fucking shovel.”
I meant a short handle.
I think there is a difference between the two, and not everyone uses the terms interchangeably. I know a shovel is better for scooping and a spade for edging. I always think of a spade as the one with the flat edge, but I’m not really a gardener.
That’s called a trowel (not to be confused with the flat trowels used in applying mortar—that’s an entirely different tool). See the very bottom entry on this article on Gizmodo: 8 Types of Shovels Everyone Should Know.
Again, fiction. It’s not interesting to watch our heroes spend more time than the running length of the movie digging holes. I assure you that actually digging holes in the US is a giant pain in the rear.
Certainly all of the digging I did as a child in New England in my parents’ gardens involved many, many rocks and stones. (I was told that the glaciers deposited many stones throughout New England.) And I’m always impressed in movies and TV shows when people dig holes by hand they get perfectly straight walls. None of my holes ever looked that neat.
I lived in Hawaii for a time and just try digging a hole in most places there - you get about a foot of topsoil (if you’re lucky) and then it’s lava… all the way down.
See, I always figured a spade was a type of shovel. Specifically, the type that looks like a spade, with a round, pointy end. There are short handle ones and long handled ones and hand spades for gardening. And then there are all those other types of shovels with flat ends. Scoops, snow shovels, and this guy.
See that little lip on the metal part of the square shovel in that link? That’s far more important than a dumb handle on the other end. I’ve sliced my boots up trying to dig with shovels that didn’t have that.
So, what exactly is the purpose of the handle on a “spade”, other to hang it up in the tool shed?
It’s a substitute for using your feet to drive it down. It’s a better mechanical pivot point if you don’t have room for a longer handle. It’s useful to have when squaring off holes because you can control your angle better.
Bingo, thanks. I remember it now from the movie.
The only thing I want to add is, that for bashing zombies, the long, straight handle is far superior.
Amen. Except that when the “blade” is at an angle it becomes a hoe.
And I learned a new word “mattock”. Thanks !
Is a ‘pick’ (as in picks and shovels) the same as a mattock? That’s what I would call it.
A little more complicated than that but you are damn close.
http://gizmodo.com/5994728/the-8-types-of-shovels-everyone-should-know
Of course, the crew boss that berated me for using the term “round point shovel” would have sneered at referring to a “grub hoe” as a “mattock.”
I often use grub hoe to describe a mattock. A grub hoe is has a blade on only one side so they are different I guess.