[usuallysing.] ~ of sth a large number of things, which are usually unpleasant, that happen suddenly within a short period of time:
The bombing was the latest in a spate of terrorist attacks. * a recent spate of killings / thefts
IDIOMS
in (full) spate (especially BrE) (of a river) containing more water and flowing more strongly than usual:
After heavy rain, the river was in spate. * (figurative) Celia was in full spate (= completely involved in talking and not likely to stop or able to be interrupted).
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for spate is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is spate a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, spate is tagged as noun.
Does spate appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — spate appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
