ace of spades

1. 1.

   the ace in the spade suit; sometimes taken as a portent of death

   Broaderace

Questions about ace of spades

What does ace of spades mean?

ace of spades means "the ace in the spade suit; sometimes taken as a portent of death".

Is ace of spades a common word?

ace of spades is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.