Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A person or animal that digs.
- noun A tool or machine used for digging or excavating.
- noun A soldier from Australia in World War I and World War II.
- noun A soldier from New Zealand in World War I.
- noun Offensive Used as a disparaging term, especially in the 1800s, for a member of any of various Native American peoples of the Great Basin, such as the Utes, Paiutes, and Western Shoshones.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who digs for gold; a gold-miner.
- noun A person or an animal that digs; an instrument for digging.
- noun [⟨cap.] One of a degraded class of Indians in California, Nevada, and adjacent regions, belonging to several tribes, all more or less intimately connected with the Shoshones: so called because they live chiefly upon roots dug from the ground. Collectively called
Digger Indians . - noun plural In entomology, specifically, the hymenopterous insects called
digger-wasps or Fossores. SeeFossores and digger-wasp.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One who, or that which, digs.
- noun (Zoöl.) any one of the fossorial Hymenoptera.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A large piece of machinery that digs holes or trenches； an
excavator . - noun A tool for digging.
- noun A
spade (playing card). - noun One who
digs . - noun Australia, obsolete A gold miner, one who digs for gold.
- noun Australia, dated An informal
nickname for a friend; used as aterm of endearment . - noun Australia An Australian or New Zealand
soldier .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a machine for excavating
- noun a laborer who digs
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word digger.
Examples
-
At the risk of sounding all tin-foil-hatty it may be because the dirty digger is terrified of genuine competition.
Welcome Times Online Readers. « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2010
-
The first of the coniferous trees which we meet is an odd-looking one known as the digger pine.
-
We know 25 April 1915 was when the 'digger' - one of Australia's most identifiable and beloved icons - dug the first trench into the rocky canyon at Gallipoli that would soon be his grave.
unknown title 2009
-
People are quick to use the term gold digger, but it turns out to have more meanings than you might think.
Don’t Bring Home a White Boy KARYN LANGHORNE FOLAN 2010
-
Furthermore, it bore coincidental resonance with the nineteenth-century Euro-American pejorative digger, which referred to the supposed cultural inferiority of California's Native Americans, some of whom derived subsistence from the gathering of wild roots.
Manhood in the Age of Aquarius: Masculinity in Two Countercultural Communities, 196583 2007
-
On the Euro-American pejorative digger, see Robert F. Heizer, ed.,
Manhood in the Age of Aquarius: Masculinity in Two Countercultural Communities, 196583 2007
-
At three in the morning a mounted messenger galloped into Bluejacket, and before daybreak a digger committee was sitting at Delporte's Hope discussing the situation.
The Firm of Girdlestone Arthur Conan Doyle 1894
-
The digger was a strong and fierce man, and there would doubtless have been a terrible and fatal encounter if Fred had not again interfered.
Twice Bought 1859
-
Remember, boy, it is not to be a romantic gold-digger, which is another name for a born idiot, that I would send you out to California.
-
The natives of this part of the country are called digger Indians, not with reference to gold-digging, but from the fact of their digging subterranean dwellings, in which they pass the winter, and also from the fact that they grub in the earth a good deal for roots, on which they partly subsist.
john commented on the word digger
In New England, "take a digger" means to fall down.
December 30, 2007
travismcdermott commented on the word digger
c1400 Promp. Parv. 118/1 Deluar or dyggar, fossor.
April 25, 2008
bilby commented on the word digger
Australian slang - an Australian soldier, especially a uniformed recruit of the Army.
April 25, 2008
tbtabby commented on the word digger
An excellent webcomic.
June 19, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word digger
"And he'd lost his postcard from Egypt, the one he got from his dad's cousin, Earl. Back in '43 he wrote a letter to cheer up a digger. He addressed it: Earl Blunt, EGYPT, and it found him, just as he assumed it would. And a card came back, an exotic picture from another world. He'd stuck it somewhere secret and had bamboozled himself with his own cunning."
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, p 46 of the Graywolf Press hardcover edition
March 27, 2010