Other forms: dredging, dredged, dredges
To dredge is to scoop material up from the bottom of water. Dredge the harbour, dredge the channel, dredge up the past.
Ports have to do it constantly, because silt fills a channel as fast as it is cleared and a ship needs its depth. To dredge up the past is to bring back what everybody had let settle. In cooking, to dredge means to coat food in flour.
1verbdredgeTo scoop material up from the bottom of water.
“Workers dredged the canal to remove years of mud and rubbish from the bottom.”
dredge is a scooping.
Probably from a Scots or Middle Dutch word for a drag-net.
Middle Dutch
dregghe — drag-net
Old English
*dreċġ
Scots
dreg-boat
English, today
dredge
Dredging From Scots dreg-boat, dreg-bot (from Old English dreċġ); or alternatively from Middle Dutch dregghe (“drag-net”), probably ultimately from the same root as drag.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA