Dig Meaning

/dɪɡ/
A1

Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.

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verbTo move hard-packed earth out of the way, especially downward to make a hole with a shovel. Or to drill, or the like, through rocks, roads, or the like. More generally, to make any similar hole by moving material out of the way.

verbTo get by digging; to take from the ground; often with up.

Some people tried to dig the treasure out, but they couldn't.
On colder days, they curl up or dig a hole in the snow.
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
None
CEFR Practice Quiz
Experienced archaeologists ____ carefully for ancient artifacts in the desert.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Some people tried to ____ the treasure out, but they couldn't.

From Middle English diggen (“to dig”, 13th c.), an alteration of dīken, from Old English dīcian (“to dig a ditch, mound up earth”), from Proto-West Germanic *dīkōn, which see for cognates. This verb is denominal from Proto-Germanic *dīkaz (“pool, puddle; dyke, ditch”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeygʷ- (“to stab, dig”). The form with g may have been influenced by Old French *diguer, a variant of dikier, itself from the West Germanic verb above. French forms with g are attested only in the 15th c., thus 200 years later than in English. On the other hand, French has according forms also for the underlying noun (cf. digue) and the phonetic development is more plausible in French than in English.

"Miss Thorn began digging up the turf with her lofter: it was a painful moment for me. ¶ “You might at least have tried me, Mrs. Cooke,” I said." — 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
"Peter dug at his books all the harder." — 1894, Paul Leicester Ford, The Honorable Peter Stirling:
"Digging deeper, the invention of eyeglasses is an elaboration of the more fundamental development of optics technology. The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight." — 2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist:
"You should have seen children […] dig and push their mothers under the sides, saying thus to them: Look, mother, how great a lubber doth yet wear pearls." — 1551, Thomas More, “(please specify the Internet Archive page)”, in Raphe Robynson [i.e., Ralph Robinson], transl., A Fruteful, and Pleasaunt Worke of the Best State of a Publyque Weale, and of the Newe Yle Called Utopia: […], London: […] [Steven Mierdman for] Abraham Vele, […], →OCLC:
"[…] 'let him go, I tell you, or I'll be after breaking your ugly mug,' and with that I gave him a dig that knocked him into smithereens." — 1836, The Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée, volume 7, page 167:

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CEFR Practice Quiz
Experienced archaeologists ____ carefully for ancient artifacts in the desert.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Some people tried to ____ the treasure out, but they couldn't.

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