Dug

How to spell dug

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dug

What does dug mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of dig: broke up, turned over, or made a hole in the ground.

Dug in a sentence

• The gardener dug a deep trench for the new fence posts.

• They dug through the old files until they found the contract.

Where does dug come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word 'dug' is the irregular past tense and past participle of 'dig', a verb whose history is a little tangled. 'Dig' itself appears in late Middle English, probably related to Old English dic, meaning a 'ditch' or 'dyke', so the underlying idea was always about cutting into the ground to make a trench or channel. The modern past forms 'dug' replaced an older regular form 'digged', which was still common in the 1600s and even appears in the King James Bible. Over time English speakers reshaped many such verbs on the pattern of strong verbs like 'cling' to 'clung' and 'sling' to 'slung', and 'dig' to 'dug' settled in by the 1700s. Because it follows that same short vowel pattern, the spelling is mercifully simple, just three letters with no silent traps.

How the word is built

• dug (irregular past tense and past participle of 'dig', from Old English dician)