noun
Meaning 1
A large piece of machinery that digs holes or trenches.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: excavator
Antonyms: none provided
Standard Lemma guide
digger
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Pronunciation
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
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General-American: /ˈdɪɡɚ/
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Received-Pronunciation: /ˈdɪɡə/
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Australia: Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
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rhymes with -ɪɡə(ɹ)
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CMU ARPABET: D IH1 G ER0 Digits mark lexical stress: 1 primary, 2 secondary, 0 unstressed.
noun
Meaning 2
A tool for digging.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 3
A spade (playing card).
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: slang
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 4
One who digs.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 5
A gold miner, one who digs for gold.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: Australia, obsolete
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 6
An Australian soldier.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: Australia, informal
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 7
a friendly term of address, especially to a man.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: Australia, broadly, dated
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 8
A member of any Native American people in the western United States, especially Native Californians.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: US, dated, ethnic, offensive, slang, slur, vulgar
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 9
A soldier from Australia or New Zealand.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 10
One of a group of Protestant English agrarian communists, begun by Gerrard Winstanley as "True Levellers" in 1649.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: historical
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 11
One of a degraded tribe of California Native Americans who dug up roots for food.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: derogatory, obsolete
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: Shoshokie, Shoshoko
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 12
A user of the American news aggregator Digg.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: Internet
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 13
a machine for excavating
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: power shovel, excavator, shovel
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: machine
Narrower terms: backhoe, dredge, steam shovel
noun
Meaning 14
a laborer who digs
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: laborer, manual laborer, labourer, jack
Narrower terms: ditch digger, mud digger, trencher
History
Etymology
From Middle English dyggar, equivalent to dig + -er. In the sense of "Australian soldier", attributed to the considerable time that soldiers spent digging trenches during World War I.
* Derived from Australian Colonial goldfields terminology. The term represents the mateship of common interests and activities where most of the population were gold miners, and almost everybody was a mate, a "digger", with a common cause against the troopers, the traps, the mining license inspectors.
From Digg + -er.
Across languages
Translations
53 source translations are retained for this English entry.
- Catalan: excavadora — tool for digging
- Esperanto: fosilo — tool for digging
- Estonian: kopp — tool for digging
- Estonian: labidas — tool for digging
- Estonian: kühvel — tool for digging
- Estonian: kaevur — tool for digging
- Finnish: kaivuri — tool for digging
- German: Grabwerkzeug — tool for digging
- Macedonian: иско́пувач (iskópuvač) — tool for digging
- Arabic: حَفَّار (ḥaffār) — one who digs
- Belarusian: капа́льнік (kapálʹnik) — one who digs
- Belarusian: земляко́п (zjemljakóp) — one who digs
- Belarusian: граба́р (hrabár) — one who digs
- Bulgarian: копа́ч (kopáč) — one who digs
- Catalan: excavador — one who digs
- Czech: kopáč — one who digs
- Danish: graver — one who digs
- Dutch: graver — one who digs
- Estonian: kaevaja — one who digs
- Finnish: kaivaja — one who digs
- French: excavateur — one who digs
- German: Gräber — one who digs
- German: Gräberin — one who digs
- Greek: εκσκαφέας (ekskaféas) — one who digs
- Ancient Greek: σκαφεύς (skapheús) — one who digs
- Macedonian: ко́пач (kópač) — one who digs
- Malay: penggali — one who digs
- Malay: pengorek — one who digs
- Marathi: खोदणारा (khodṇārā) — one who digs
- Marathi: खोदणारी (khodṇārī) — one who digs
- Middle English: gravere — one who digs
- Middle English: delvere — one who digs
- Norwegian Bokmål: graver — one who digs
- Old English: delfere — one who digs
- Polish: kopacz — one who digs
- Romanian: săpător — one who digs
- Russian: копа́тель (kopátelʹ) — one who digs
- Russian: землеко́п (zemlekóp) — one who digs
- Russian: копа́льщик (kopálʹščik) — one who digs
- Russian: граба́рь (grabárʹ) — one who digs
- Russian: гра́барь (grábarʹ) — one who digs
- Serbo-Croatian: ко̀па̄ч — one who digs
- Serbo-Croatian: kòpāč — one who digs
- Slovak: kopáč — one who digs
- Slovene: kopač — one who digs
- Swedish: grävare — one who digs
- Turkish: kazıcı — one who digs
- Ukrainian: копа́ч (kopáč) — one who digs
- Ukrainian: землеко́п (zemlekóp) — one who digs
- Ukrainian: граба́р (hrabár) — one who digs
- Ukrainian: гра́бар (hrábar) — one who digs
- Ukrainian: копа́льник (kopálʹnyk) — one who digs
- Yiddish: גרעבער (greber) — one who digs
Real reading context