The form withg may have been influenced byOld French*diguer, a variant ofdikier, itself from the West Germanic verb above. French forms withg are attested only in the 15th c., thus 200 years later than in English. On the other hand, French has according forms also for the underlying noun (cf.digue) and the phonetic development is more plausible in French than in English.
dig (third-person singular simple presentdigs,present participledigging,simple past and past participledugor(archaic)digged)
(transitive,intransitive) To move hard-packedearth out of the way, especially downward to make ahole with ashovel. Or todrill, or the like, through rocks, roads, or the like. More generally, to make any similar hole by moving material out of the way.
Theydug an eight-foot ditch along the side of the road.
In the wintertime, heavy truck tiresdig into the road, forming potholes.
If the plane can't pull out of the dive it is in, it'lldig a hole in the ground.
My seven-year-old son alwaysdigs a hole in the middle of his mashed potatoes and fills it with gravy before he starts to eat them.
Digging deeper, the invention of eyeglasses is an elaboration of the more fundamental development of optics technology. The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight.
You should have seen children[…]dig and push their mothers under the sides, saying thus to them: Look, mother, how great a lubber doth yet wear pearls.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
1838, John Baldwin Buckstone,The Irish Lion. A Farce, in One Act, page15:
Buckram ! that's adig at my trade.
1961 October, “The winter timetables of British Railways: Southern Region”, inTrains Illustrated, page593:
Why this already very fast train should be speeded up still further, when none of the other more easily timed S.R. West of England trains has a single minute pared from its schedule, is unexplained - unless this is a playfuldig at the Western Region, most of whose expresses, by reason of additional stops, will be decelerated from the same date.
2012, Anne Applebaum,Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56, page ccxcix:
Entitled 'On Several Mistakes of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia', this document is broader, more theoretical and more rambling than the Polish equivalent, identifying deep problems in many spheres. But it does get in a fewdigs at Slánský, accusing him of having made mistakes in recruitment to the communist party.
2013, William T. Vollmann,An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World:
Unfortunately, the man was too busy, although he said hello to the Young Man politely enough and found the time to make a fewdigs about the postponement of the elections.
2018, Paul Maunder,The Wind At My Back: A Cycling Life:
In 'Sorted for E's and Whizz', Pulp's Jarvis Cocker wrote about losing an important part of his brain somewhere in a field in Hampshire, and took adig at the rave scene for being hypocritical – idealistic and friendly when everyone was coming up on their pills, less so when everyone's coming down and you're trying to get a lift home – and essentially meaningless.
2021 December 8, Arwa Mahdawi, “Elon Musk is learning a hard lesson: never date a musician”, inThe Guardian[1]:
She could have made adig about the size of his rockets.
The occupation of digging for gold.
1887, Harriet W. Daly,Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page207:
Don Quixote told us that Western Australia was the same to him as any other country, except that it possessed the charm of novelty, and he assured us that as soon as he was well enough he would be off on the "dig" once more.
Between the two extremes of college men the unsocialdig and the flunking swell, lies the majority, who, acknowledging the duty and merit of hard work, see the value in social and recreative line, but are at somewhat of a loss, seemingly, how to proportionize the time given to the different sides of college life, or how far to allow themselves to go on the more attractive side.
FromAfrican American Vernacular English; due to lack of writing of slave speech, etymology is difficult to trace, but it has been suggested that it is fromWolofdëgg,dëgga(“to understand, to appreciate”).[1] It has also been suggested that it is fromIrishdtuig, thus being aDoublet oftwig.[2] Others do not propose a distinct etymology, instead considering this a semantic shift of the existing English term (comparedig in/dig into).[3]
10 March, 1616, excerpt from "A true and perfect Inventory of all the Goods &c. which late were of Philippe Oldfeid," reprinted in1890, J.P. Earwaker (ed., compiler), "Badwall Township: Berington of Moorsbarrow and Bradwall, Pedigree" inThe History of the Ancient Parish of Sandbach, Co. Chester.[…]
Powltrey, &c, &c. Item ten turkeys [...] Item threeDigs [an old Cheshire word for duck] and a Drake [...] Item ffower Capons [...]
[The word's gloss has been inserted by Earwaker]
1877, Lieut.-Col. Egerton Leigh, M.P.,A Glossary of Words Used in The Dialect of Cheshire., London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., pages61–62:
dig, ordigg, s.—A duck. A gentleman introduced a man to an old lady in America as an inhaitant of Cheshire, her old county. "I'll soon see," said she, "if he is reet Cheshire born. Tell me," said she to the man, "what adig, a snig, a grig, a peckled poot, and a peannot are?" B. Kennett in hisGlossary of the British Museum, has the word "dig." "As fierce as adig," is a Lancashire and probably a Cheshire proverb, and reminds one of the Cloucestershire name for a sheep, viz.: "A Cotswold lion."
1953, John Lunn, “Beasts on the Common, 1613”, inA Short History of the Township of Tyldesley[…], Longsight, Manchester: Co-operative Wholesale Society Limited:
Smith's farm was near to Parrs; new buildings had been built in the Hemp Croft. He carried coals in his cart by an inside chest, and had three hives of bees and several spinning wheels; his poultry comprised four hens, twodiggs or ducks, and one drake. His total estate was £66. 10s.
Ska vi gå hem tilldig eller hem till mig, ellervar och en hem till sitt? Ska vi göra som dom andra ochägna oss åt varandra, eller ska var och en sköta sitt?
Shall we go to your place ["home toyou" – idiomatic] or to my place [home to me], or each one ["each and one" – idiomatic] home to theirs [nominalized – neuter gender is used when there is no concretereferent, like in impersonal constructions and here, as a rule of thumb]? Shall we do like the others and spend time on each other [engage in each other as an activity – doesn't have the connotations of "devote"], or shall each one mind [take care of] theirs [nominalized]?
Det finns bara en av mig och det är jag. Det finns bara en avdig och det är du. Det finns bara två av oss, och det är vi.
There is only one of me and that is I. There is only one ofyou [object] and that is you [subject]. There are only two of us, and that is us [we – subject]. [Swedish has some of the same subject/object fuzziness as English, but a standalone "Det är <pronoun>" idiomatically (through intuition rather than being taught) uses the subject form]
Note that some verbs have special senses when used reflexively. For example, do not confusedu lär dig att... ("you learn to...") [reflexive] withjag lär dig att... ("I teach you to...") ordu lär dig själv att... ("you teach yourself to..."). Here,lär meansteach(es) if it is not reflexive, butlearn(s) if it is reflexive. Thus, the separate pronoun "dig själv" is needed when object and subject agree, even though the verb should not be used in the reflexive case.
Also note that in the imperative, when there's usually no explicit subject given, the "själv" is dropped.
Dej (along withmej) was popular as a semi-informal spelling around the 1970s to 1980s, and is therefore seen in many old song lyrics, for example. Usage has now mostly reverted back todig.
^R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present), “dig”, inGeiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies
Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828), William Barnes, editor,A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published1867,page35
