How to Use spadework in a Sentence

spadework

noun

• She had her assistants do the spadework in preparation for the trial.
• That spadework laid the groundwork for the current suit.
  — Robert T. Garrett, Dallas News, 3 Feb. 2021
• Sekulow also got in some political spadework that offers clues as to the White House's legal strategy ahead.
  — Stephen Collinson, CNN, 20 June 2017
• Trump had already given a major concession by agreeing to meet Kim before any of the diplomatic spadework was accomplished.
  — Barbara Demick, latimes.com, 24 May 2018
• Diplomats are appalled that Trump has done the whole thing backwards: Leaders usually meet at the end of a painstaking diplomatic process, coming together at the top of the mountain of spadework done by armies of anonymous bureaucrats.
  — Ryu Spaeth, The New Republic, 9 Mar. 2018
• Donald Trump, the outsider’s outsider, would benefit immensely from his party’s spadework.
  — E.j. Dionne Jr., The Atlantic, 30 Oct. 2016
• The concern among the policy experts is that there has been so little of the kind of diplomatic spadework that has led to past breakthroughs on similarly complex issues – for instance, President Richard Nixon’s 1972 opening to China.
  — Ned Temko, The Christian Science Monitor, 2 Apr. 2018
• First, it was meant to build on Elizabeth Warren’s reputation as an academic who does the intellectual spadework.
  — Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 9 Dec. 2019
• Seeking to determine what went wrong, the lawyers asked investigators to perform some additional spadework.
  — Michael Wines, New York Times, 31 May 2017
• That triumph only occurred after years of diplomatic spadework, including a secret visit by Henry A. Kissinger to China a year earlier.
  — Eli Stokols, latimes.com, 9 June 2018
• In recent decades, legal conservatives have reaped the rewards of the spadework done by this older generation of academic political philosophers.
  — Peter Hammond Schwartz, The New Republic, 3 Feb. 2021
• Tillerson, meanwhile, is expected to spend far less time engaging in diplomatic spadework than his predecessors, who traditionally spend more than a week in New York meeting with foreign dignitaries in countless meetings.
  — chicagotribune.com, 29 July 2017
• Democratic voters remain more politically engaged than Republican voters on several dimensions — including their willingness to do the spadework of an election campaign.
  — John Sides, Washington Post, 13 June 2018

Last Updated: 24 Jul 2024