dig
verb · noun
Simple meaning
Get the meaning of something.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
digIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdɪɡ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
Get the meaning of something
transitive
To get by digging; to take from the ground; often with up.
transitiveintransitive
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.
Work hard
“She was digging away at her math homework.”
Remove, harvest, or recover by digging
Create by digging
noun
A cutting, sarcastic remark.
The occupation of digging for gold.
A thrust; a poke.
An archeological or paleontological investigation, or the site where such an investigation is taking place.
The act of digging
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Remove, harvest, or recover by digging
Used this way, dig is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- grind , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
- moil , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use dig
- “Dig the oars into the water.”verb
- “She gave me a sharp dig in the ribs.”noun
- “The book was in good condition except for a dig in the back cover.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.