DIGGING

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does digging mean? 

• DIGGING (noun)
  The noun DIGGING has 1 sense:

1. the act of digging

  Familiarity information: DIGGING used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DIGGING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of digging

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

dig; digging; excavation

Context example:

there's an interesting excavation going on near Princeton

Hypernyms ("digging" is a kind of...):

creating by removal (the act of creating by removing something)

Derivation:

dig (turn up, loosen, or remove earth)

 Context examples 

Silver doubled his pace, digging away with the foot of his crutch like one possessed; and next moment he and I had come also to a dead halt.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to Mr. Utterson’s dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

He raged through the camp, smelling and digging in every likely place, snarling so frightfully that Pike heard and shivered in his hiding-place.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

She afterwards continued her work, whilst the young man went into the garden and appeared busily employed in digging and pulling up roots.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Like a cat, White Fang bowed his hind-quarters in, and, with the feet digging into his enemy's abdomen above him, he began to claw with long tearing-strokes.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

After taking rock samples and digging into the library of existing data, Johnson created a cross-section grid of the oxygen isotope and temperature values found in the rock.

(Scientists determine early Earth was a ‘water world’ by studying exposed ocean crust, National Science Foundation)

They function separately and so can adapt to different ways of life, like running, flying, digging and climbing.

(What makes a mammal a mammal? Our spine, say scientists, National Science Foundation)

You have done a good deal of digging by your callosities.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As to the other, there was nought holy about him that I could see, and it would be cheaper for me to pray for myself than to give a crown to one who spent his days in digging for lettuces.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They all agreed that I could not be produced according to the regular laws of nature, because I was not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)