Other forms: dug, digging, digs
To dig is to make a hole in the ground with a tool or with paws. Dig a hole, dig the garden, dig for treasure.
The past tense is dug. An archaeological dig is an excavation, and the noun is standard in that field. Dig also means to like, in dated American slang, and a dig is a pointed remark: that was a dig at me. Note dig in, meaning to entrench or to start eating; dig up, meaning to unearth or to find out; and dig your heels in, meaning to refuse to move.
1verbdigTo make a hole in the ground.
“The children love to dig in the sand with their plastic spades.”
2nounarchaeologicalAn archaeological excavation, or a pointed remark.
“Students joined the dig and found pieces of Roman pottery.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
dig is an excavating.
Middle English diggen is an alteration of diken, from Old English dician, to dig a ditch. Ditch and dyke are the same word, which is why one means the hole and the other the bank beside it.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeygʷ-
Old French
*diguer
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeygʷ- — to stab, dig
Proto-Germanic
*dīkaz — pool, puddle; dyke, ditch
Proto-West Germanic
*dīkōn
Old English
dīcian — to dig a ditch, mound up earth
Middle English
diggen
English, today
dig
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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA