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Dig

1. To turn up, or delve in, (earth) with a spade or a hoe; to open, loosen, or break up (the soil) with a spade, or other sharp instrument; to pierce, open, or loosen, as if with a spade. Be first to dig the ground. (Dryden)

2. To get by digging; as, to dig potatoes, or gold.

3. To hollow out, as a well; to form, as a ditch, by removing earth; to excavate; as, to dig a ditch or a well.

4. To thrust; to poke. 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. (Robynson (mores Utopia)) to dig down, to undermine and cause to fall by digging; as, to dig down a wall. To dig from, out of, out, or up, to get out or obtain by digging; as, to dig coal from or out of a mine; to dig out fossils; to dig up a tree. The preposition is often omitted; as, the men are digging coal, digging iron ore, digging potatoes. To dig in, to cover by digging; as, to dig in manure.

Origin: Dug or Digged; Digging. Digged is archaic] [OE. Diggen, perh. The same word as diken, dichen (see dike, Ditch); cf. Dan. Dige to dig, dige a ditch; or (?) akin to E. 1st dag.

1. To work with a spade or other like implement; to do servile work; to delve. Dig for it more than for hid treasures. (job III. 21) I can not dig; to beg i am ashamed. (Luke xvi. 3)

2. (Science: chemical) to take ore from its bed, in distinction from making excavations i 47e n search of ore.

3. To work like a digger; to study ploddingly and laboriously.