Dig

How to spell dig

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dig

What does dig mean?

1. verbTo break up and move earth or other material, usually with a tool or the hands.
2. nounAn organised archaeological excavation of a site.
3. nounA pointed, mocking remark aimed at someone.

Dig in a sentence

• verb

  The gardeners had to dig a deep trench for the new pipe.

• noun

  The students spent the summer working on an archaeological dig in Greece.

• noun

  Her comment about his timekeeping was a deliberate dig at the whole team.

• verb

  The dog likes to dig holes in the flower bed.

• noun

  The museum funded a dig near the old Roman fort.

• noun

  He could not resist taking a dig at his rival during the meeting.

Where does dig come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Dig is a relatively late arrival in English, recorded from around the 1300s, and its earlier history is genuinely murky. It probably comes from Old English dician, meaning 'to make a ditch or dyke', which is closely tied to the nouns 'ditch' and 'dyke'; in this view, to dig was originally to throw up earth in the way one does when cutting a drainage channel. Some scholars instead connect it to an Old French source, digue meaning 'dyke', itself borrowed from a Germanic word. Either way the underlying idea is the same: turning over and moving soil. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from the narrow sense of ditching to any breaking of the ground, and figurative uses such as a verbal 'dig' (a sharp poke at someone) grew naturally from the image of a jabbing tool. The spelling stayed short and blunt, just three letters, which is why it is one of the easiest words in the language to commit to paper.

How the word is built

• dig (single Germanic root; no prefix or suffix)