dig
part of speech
verb (dig, digs, dug, digging); noun (a dig, digs)
meaning for a pupil
1) To dig is to make a hole in the ground, for example with a spade or with hands or paws. tree →
2) To dig something up is to get it out of the ground. tree →
3) A dig is a place where archaeologists dig to find old things. tree →
4) A dig can be a little poke, or an unkind remark. tree →
5) «Dig in» means start eating. tree →
sense in the lessons
In school maths: digging a length or a hole at a rate; holes dug; amount = rate × time. In science and history: archaeologists dig up fossils and old objects; worms dig tunnels. In everyday life: digging in the garden or at the beach. Phrases: «dig a hole», «dig up», «dig in», «dig deep» (try very hard).
examples
- He digs 2 m of ditch an hour. tree →
- 3 workers dug 12 holes. tree →
- How long to dig 10 m? tree →
- Each hole needs 1 tree. tree →
- The dog dug a hole and buried its bone. tree →
- We dug for treasure on the beach. tree →
- Archaeologists dug up a Roman coin. tree →
- Dinner's ready, dig in! tree →
note
Past «dug» (not «digged»). Maths: a rate over time: amount = rate × time. Trap: more diggers dig faster, so the time goes down. Safety: never dig near cables or pipes without a grown-up.
In the corpora
- Elephants use their tusks to dig for water and salt, strip bark, move things and defend themselves.
- Woodpeckers hammer wood up to about 20 times a second to find grubs, dig nests and drum to claim a territory.
- A wild animal spends most of its day busy: searching for food, digging, climbing, sniffing and chasing.
- Tenrecs look like hedgehogs or shrews but are actually related to elephants and aardvarks, African animals that dig for ants.
- After rare rains the outback can burst into flowers, and some frogs dig into the ground and wait years for the next rain.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «dig» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.