digging up
9
4.8
- noun
:
excavación
- I kneeled down in a bed of nasty yellow flowers and started digging up the ground between them.
Examples
-
Anyway, as we were in the process of digging up potatoes, I thought, "What the hell?"
Blog text (7) -
There is a root in my herb garden that needs digging up.
Fiction book (2002) -
And as we passed the dump, there was a pack of wild dogs digging up the body.
-
We used to have good times there, digging up clams, watching the waves.
Fiction book (2002) -
We reach the lab's farm at Isabela and board a pickup truck that takes us into a field where workers are digging up sweet potatoes.
Academic text (1995) -
He was digging up the acorns he had buried last fall.
Fiction book (2001) -
Hunter-gatherers have been digging up roots and tubers for hundreds of thousands of years.
Blog text (28) -
Emily Halbakken, education program manager for the museum, has worked as a paleontologist digging up dinosaur bones in Wyoming.
Blog text (30) -
Pauli Murray seems to have taken the role of "memory bandit" quite seriously as she sought to uncover her family's past, digging up her ancestors' buried narrative by looking through archives and meeting with those who possess deep knowledge of the communities from which her ancestors came.
Blog text (7) -
The archaeologists were digging up ancient artifacts buried beneath the soil.
Synonyms
83
1.0
Making a hole in the ground using tools like a shovel
24
5.8
Digging away earth to find old objects or to make space for a building
11
9.4
To dig up a buried body to examine it
1
9.9
Digging up buried human remains for a court or scientific investigation
How Revealed
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to uncover by digging' is directly and predictably derived from 'dig' (to move earth) plus the particle 'up' signalling removal/completion or movement out of the ground. This verb + particle composition is a common, cross-linguistic pattern in English phrasal verbs, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Digging up comes from the simple image of using a shovel to dig something up from under the ground, like an old object or a 'buried' body. So, it means 'the act of uncovering' something by digging.