dig
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /dɪɡ/
rhymes: -ɪɡ
Forms: form: digs
form: digging
form: dug
form: dug
form: digged
form: digged
Etymology: 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.
Senses: examples: text: They dug an eight-foot ditch along the side of the road.
text: In the wintertime, heavy truck tires dig into the road, forming potholes.
text: If the plane can't pull out of the dive it is in, it'll dig a hole in the ground.
text: My seven-year-old son always digs a hole in the middle of his mashed potatoes and fills it with gravy before he starts to eat them.
text: 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.
ref: 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:
glosses: To 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.
examples: text: to dig potatoes
text: to dig up gold
glosses: To get by digging; to take from the ground; often with up.
topics: business
mining
glosses: To take ore from its bed, in distinction from making excavations in search of ore.
examples: text: Peter dug at his books all the harder.
ref: 1894, Paul Leicester Ford, The Honorable Peter Stirling:
glosses: To work like a digger; to study ploddingly and laboriously.
examples: text: to dig up evidence
text: to dig out the facts
text: 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.
ref: 2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist:
glosses: To investigate, to research, often followed by out or up.
examples: text: He dug an elbow into my ribs and guffawed at his own joke.
text: 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.
ref: 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:
glosses: To thrust; to poke.
topics: ball-games
games
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
volleyball
glosses: To defend against an attack hit by the opposing team by successfully passing the ball
Derived terms: crate-dig
dig a hole for oneself
dig around
dig deep
dig down
dig for victory
diggable
diggety
dig in
dig in one's heels
dig into
dig oneself in a hole
dig oneself into a hole
dig one's grave with a fork
dig one's grave with a fork and spoon
dig one's heels in
dig one's own grave
dig out
dig out of a hole
dig over
dig round
dig up
dig up dirt
dig yourself
double dig
gold-dig
he who digs a pit for others falls in himself
misdig
redig
underdig
undig