Past tense of dig
irregular verb
The past tense of dig is dug. The past participle is also dug.
Forms of dig
| Base form (V1) | dig /dɪɡ/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | dug /dʌɡ/ |
| Past participle (V3) | dug /dʌɡ/ |
| Present participle | digging /ˈdɪɡɪŋ(ɡ)/ |
| Third person singular | digs /dɪɡz/ |
Dug in a sentence
- They dug an eight-foot ditch along the side of the road.
- He dug an elbow into my ribs and guffawed at his own joke.
- The trenches for installing the underground cables were dug with a trencher.From the entry trench
- The tunnelist showed me the cellar he'd dug beneath his house.From the entry tunnelist
- I made a blind hole in the wall for a peg. I dug a hole and planted a tree in it.From the entry hole
Meaning of dig
- verb To move hard-packed earth out of the way, especially downward to make a hole with a shovel. Or to drill, or the like, through rocks, roads, or the like. More generally, to make any similar hole by moving material out of the way.
- verb To get by digging; to take from the ground; often with up.
- verb To take ore from its bed, in distinction from making excavations in search of ore.
Questions about the past tense of dig
- What is the past tense of dig?
- The past tense of dig is dug.
- What is the past participle of dig?
- The past participle of dig is dug.
- Is dig a regular or irregular verb?
- Dig is an irregular verb: its past tense is not formed with -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dig (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this page: “Past tense of dig.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/dig. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.