excavation
part of speech
noun (an excavation, excavations)
meaning for a pupil
1) Digging in the ground, especially carefully to find old things such as bones, pots and buildings. tree →
2) A place where such digging is done; a dig. tree →
3) Digging a big hole for building, for example for a basement or tunnel. tree →
sense in the lessons
In history and science lessons, archaeologists carry out excavations to find Roman coins or dinosaur bones. On building sites, excavation means digging out the ground before building. Safety: excavations are deep holes — keep out.
examples
- The excavation uncovered a Roman mosaic floor. tree →
- Archaeologists spent months on the excavation. tree →
- We visited an excavation where dinosaur bones were found. tree →
- Keep away from the excavation — the sides may fall in. tree →
- Excavation for the new car park begins next week. tree →
- The museum shows objects from the excavation. tree →
- The excavation was carefully mapped in squares. tree →
- The wonderful excavations in Olympia, to which allusion has already been made, have brought to light an exquisite marble group of Hermes and the infant Bacchus, by Praxiteles. tree →
note
Verb: excavate; person: excavator (also a digging machine). Countable: excavations. Archaeologists dig slowly with small tools and brushes so nothing breaks. Dinosaur digs are by palaeontologists, not archaeologists — a common confusion.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «excavation» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.