Skip to main content
digging

digging

83 1.0
Making a hole in the ground using tools like a shovel
  • noun
  • /ˈdɪɡɪŋ/
translation icon : excavación
  • "English," said Charlie Kepper, an archaeologist who had done most of his previous digging around North American Native mounds.
  • digging tools
  • excavation and digging
  • sites for digging

I said, listen, if you run this dig, I'm breaking on it.

Examples

  • The workers started the digging of the foundation early in the morning.

  • Father did most of the digging, of course.

  • I did some digging too, you know.

  • The more digging done, the more digging there was to do.

    Academic text (2003)
  • Under the wall's foundation, he learned over years of digging, was another high wall, and another, and another.

    Academic text (1998)
  • Garden trowels and other digging tools are useful for studying plants and soil organisms.

    Academic text (1995)
  • During the day, the digging revealed six more skeletons, some of them almost full-term babies.

    Fiction book (1993)
  • Nimiipuu women harvested root crops by prying them back and loosening the soil with a digging stick.

    Academic text (2012)
  • After hours of digging, they finally uncovered ancient artifacts buried in the ground.

  • The children enjoyed playing in the sand, digging holes to see who could make the biggest one.

Synonyms

excavation
vsdigging
24 5.8

Digging away earth to find old objects or to make space for a building

is the common act of making holes or moving earth with hands or tools

Compounds

9 4.8

Removing earth to uncover something buried, like an old object or body

How Extensive

strip mining
  • Specialized
2 5.3
mining
191 2.7
quarrying
1 7.2
digging
83 1.0

Surface Forms

digging singular
diggings plural

Morphology

digging = dig (transparent) = dig + ing

A standard deverbal nominalization using '-ing' meaning the action or process of digging; meaning is directly derived from the verb.

Etymology

Digging comes from the old verb dig, which meant 'to break up or move earth', and you can picture a person or a machine called a digger doing that work. So, digging is the act of making a hole in the ground or moving soil.