dig
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: ball-games
business
cricket
entertainment
games
hobbies
lifestyle
mining
music
sports
volleyball
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.
Inflected forms:
form: digs
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: digging
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: dug
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: dug
pos: verb
tags: past
form: digged
pos: verb
tags: archaic
participle
past
form: digged
pos: verb
tags: archaic
past
form: digs
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: 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.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
transitive
examples: They dug an eight-foot ditch along the side of the road.
In the wintertime, heavy truck tires dig into the road, forming potholes.
If the plane can't pull out of the dive it is in, it'll dig a hole in the ground.
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.
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.
gloss: To get by digging; to take from the ground; often with up.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: to dig potatoes
to dig up gold
gloss: To take ore from its bed, in distinction from making excavations in search of ore.
pos: verb
gloss: To work like a digger; to study ploddingly and laboriously.
pos: verb
tags: US
dated
slang
examples: Peter dug at his books all the harder.
gloss: To investigate, to research, often followed by out or up.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
examples: to dig up evidence
to dig out the facts
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.
gloss: To thrust; to poke.
pos: verb
examples: He dug an elbow into my ribs and guffawed at his own joke.
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.
gloss: To defend against an attack hit by the opposing team by successfully passing the ball
pos: verb
gloss: An archeological or paleontological investigation, or the site where such an investigation is taking place.
pos: noun
gloss: Any act of digging to find or retrieve something.
pos: noun
examples: Iron Springs offers a guided clam dig for first timers or those who are rusty at spotting the clam's show at low tide. It includes a license and all the equipment you'll need to catch your limit on Copalis Beach […]
gloss: A thrust; a poke.
pos: noun
examples: He guffawed and gave me a dig in the ribs after telling his latest joke.
gloss: A hard blow, especially (boxing) a straight left-hander delivered under the opponent's guard.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
slang
examples: […] '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.
gloss: A defensive pass of the ball that has been attacked by the opposing team.
pos: noun
gloss: An innings.
pos: noun
gloss: A cutting, sarcastic remark.
pos: noun
examples: Buckram ! that's a dig at my trade.
Why this already very fast train should be speeded up still further, when none of the other more easily timed S.R. West of England trains has a single minute pared from its schedule, is unexplained - unless this is a playful dig at the Western Region, most of whose expresses, by reason of additional stops, will be decelerated from the same date.
Entitled 'On Several Mistakes of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia', this document is broader, more theoretical and more rambling than the Polish equivalent, identifying deep problems in many spheres. But it does get in a few digs at Slánský, accusing him of having made mistakes in recruitment to the communist party.
Unfortunately, the man was too busy, although he said hello to the Young Man politely enough and found the time to make a few digs about the postponement of the elections.
In 'Sorted for E's and Whizz', Pulp's Jarvis Cocker wrote about losing an important part of his brain somewhere in a field in Hampshire, and took a dig at the rave scene for being hypocritical – idealistic and friendly when everyone was coming up on their pills, less so when everyone's coming down and you're trying to get a lift home – and essentially meaningless.
She could have made a dig about the size of his rockets.
gloss: The occupation of digging for gold.
pos: noun
examples: Don Quixote told us that Western Australia was the same to him as any other country, except that it possessed the charm of novelty, and he assured us that as soon as he was well enough he would be off on the "dig" once more.
gloss: A plodding and laborious student.
pos: noun
tags: US
colloquial
dated
examples: Between the two extremes of college men the unsocial dig and the flunking swell, lies the majority, who, acknowledging the duty and merit of hard work, see the value in social and recreative line, but are at somewhat of a loss, seemingly, how to proportionize the time given to the different sides of college life, or how far to allow themselves to go on the more attractive side.
gloss: A tool for digging.
pos: noun
tags: UK
dated
dialectal
gloss: A rare or interesting vinyl record bought second-hand.
pos: noun
tags: slang
examples: a £1 charity shop dig
Related words: cratedigger
digs
Derived words: 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
dig box
Translations: