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say it: spayt
spate is a noun meaning "(often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent". It carries 3 recorded senses.
(often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent
“a batch of letters”
“a deal of trouble”
“a lot of money”
“he made a mint on the stock market”
“see the rest of the winners in our huge passel of photos”
“it must have cost plenty”
“a slew of journalists”
“a wad of money”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for spate come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.