digger
Syllables: Dig·gerUK/ˈdɪɡə/US/ˈdɪɡɚ/
digger noun: a large piece of machinery that digs holes or trenches.
Noun (1)
digger (plural diggers)
- A large piece of machinery that digs holes or trenches.
- The cables are placed from 16 in. to 2 ft. down, and to save time and labour use was made of a mechanical digger lent by the Swedish State Railways.1952 January, “Electrification Progress in Norway”, in Railway Magazine, page 55
- Synonyms:
- excavator
- A tool for digging.
- The post hole digger did look ancient. I was pretty certain myself that it hadn′t dug any holes for a long, long time.2009, Sharon Bomgaars, The Best Clubhouse Ever, page 143
- A spade (playing card).
- One who digs.
- You′ve tried the supposedly sure method of squirting the digger with water from a hose, and that hasn′t worked.[…]This step will discourage 99 percent of the diggers.1997, Barbara J. Wrede, Civilizing Your Puppy, page 75
- Most retrievers are not inveterate diggers — that′s a trait usually reserved for other breeds like wire-haired terriers and schnauzers.2005, Gary R. Sampson, Dick Wolfsie, Dog Dilemmas: Simple Solutions to Everyday Problems, page 130
- A gold miner, one who digs for gold.
- A successful Australian digger — successful, not merely in siftings and washings, but bearing the title, and its best credentials, of a “nuggetter” − came down from Forest Creek recently and took up his abode in a low lodging-house in Little Bourke Street, Melbourne.1853, Charles Dickens, editor, Household Words, volume 21, page 64
- Proofs of the presence of the white man are found all over the Territory in the shape of old bouilli tins, &c., and often when out after a strayed horse, I have imagined myself to be in wilds untrodden except by the foot of the blackfellow, but the sight of an unassuming empty sardine tin would...1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 342
- An Australian soldier.
- Costume played a key part in his differentiation from British soldiers as the Digger uniform came to embody Australian versions of masculinity and mateship.1998, Helen Gilbert, Sightlines: Race, Gender, and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre, page 191
- For many, the congruencies of the Anzac legend and the diggers who served in Vietnam were slight, too slight, and the legend seemed unable to accommodate them.2002, Jeff Doyle, Jeffrey Grey, Peter Pierce, Australia's Vietnam War, page xxiii
- a friendly term of address, especially to a man.
- A member of any Native American people in the western United States, especially Native Californians.
- White men are not usually hanged for killing Chinamen, but Indians who commit such a crime are strung up with little ceremony. Last week a Digger was hung at Jackson, Amador county, for having last summer murdered some Chinamen at Rancheria.1974, Robert F. Heizer, editor, They Were Only Diggers: A Collection of Articles from California Newspapers, 1851-1866, on Indian and White Relations, Ramona: Ballena Press, page 99
- From what we could see and all we could learn, they are very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger Indians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our continent; inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to the Hottentots, and actually inferior in some respects to the...1872, Mark Twain, chapter XIX, in Roughing It, Hartford: American Publishing Company
Noun (2) capitalized: Digger
Digger (plural Diggers)
- A soldier from Australia or New Zealand.
- One of a group of Protestant English agrarian communists, begun by Gerrard Winstanley as "True Levellers" in 1649.
- One of a degraded tribe of California Native Americans who dug up roots for food.
Noun (3) capitalized: Digger
Digger (plural Diggers)
- A user of the American news aggregator Digg.
- THANKS TO DIGG, the Web’s most frequented news-ranking site, we now know: Geeks like gaming gossip, incendiary technology policy stories, and NASA photos. Diggers vote early and often, and can get breaking news to the front page surprisingly quickly.2006, PC World, page 115
- Redditors are similar to Diggers (twentysomething geeks), albeit the former are slightly more educated and gender neutral.2009 November, Dan Zarrella, “Social News and Bookmarking”, in The Social Media Marketing Book, O’Reilly Media, published 2011, section “Reddit”, page 121
digger meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
digger in Hindi
- खोदने वाला, खोदाई करने वाला
digger in Tamil
- தோண்டுபவர்
digger in Marathi
- one who digs
- खोदणारा khodṇārā, खोदणारी khodṇārī
digger in Urdu
- کھودنے والا
More languagesFewer languages
- digger in Telugu
- డిగ్గర్
- digger in Malayalam
- കുഴിച്ചെടുക്കുന്നയാൾ, കുഴിക്കുന്നയാൾ
- digger in Kannada
- ಅಗೆಯುವವನು
- digger in Punjabi
- ਡਿੱਗਰ
- digger in Gujarati
- ખોદનાર
- digger in Arabic
- حَفَّار ḥaffār
- digger in Malay
- penggali, pengorek
Examples of digger in a sentence
- The mechanical digger had tanklike treads.
- This food digger just pulled a fast one on me! I thought it was supposed to be a date, but he just wanted me to pay for his meal.
- Digger lunged past me, his shotgun arm extended down the ladderway.
Synonyms of digger
Forms of digger
| plural | diggers |
|---|---|
| plural | Diggers |
Origin of digger
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.
Words formed from digger
Phrases with digger
Words that rhyme with digger
Questions about digger
- What does digger mean?
- Digger means a large piece of machinery that digs holes or trenches.
- What is digger in Hindi?
- Digger in Hindi is खोदने वाला, खोदाई करने वाला. See Digger meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is digger?
- Digger is a noun.
- How do you pronounce digger?
- Digger is pronounced /ˈdɪɡɚ/ (US).
- What is the plural of digger?
- The plural of digger is diggers.
Words near digger in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: digger (page history and authors); Digger (page history and authors); digger (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); digger (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); digger (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); digger (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); digger (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); digger (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); digger (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); digger (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 digger.ogg.
Cite this entry: “digger.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/digger. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.