Word.ws English Dictionary

sandhog

Syllables: sand·hogUK/ˈsændhɒɡ/US/ˈsændhɔɡ/

sandhog noun: a person employed to dig tunnels, or (more generally) to work underground or under water.

sandhog: a person employed to dig tunnels, or (more generally) to work underground or under water
Image: University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections from, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sandhog (plural sandhogs)

  1. (US, also, figuratively, slang) A person employed to dig tunnels, or (more generally) to work underground or under water.
    • Sandhogs working behind a hydraulic shield excavated the riverbed silt inch by inch and installed linking sections of cast-iron tubes as they went. The digging chamber was filled with compressed air pumped in from the surface. The work was dangerous. The men who did the work, the sandhogs, were...1975, E.L. Doctorow, chapter XIII, in Ragtime, page 77
    Synonyms:
    sandhogger

Verb

sandhog (third-person singular simple present sandhogs, present participle sandhogging, simple past and past participle sandhogged)

  1. (US, intransitive, slang) To work at digging tunnels, or (more generally) underground or under water.

Synonyms of sandhog

Forms of sandhog

Noun
pluralsandhogs
alternative formsand hog
alternative formsand-hog
Verb
third-person singular presentsandhogs
present participlesandhogging
past participlesandhogged
pastsandhogged

Origin of sandhog

From sand + hog, perhaps alluding to a hog (“animal of the Suidae family, especially a boar, pig, or warthog”) digging in sand.

Words formed from sandhog

Questions about sandhog

What does sandhog mean?
Sandhog means a person employed to dig tunnels, or (more generally) to work underground or under water.
What part of speech is sandhog?
Sandhog can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sandhog?
Sandhog is pronounced /ˈsændhɒɡ/ (UK).
What is the plural of sandhog?
The plural of sandhog is sandhogs.

Words near sandhog in the dictionary

  1. sandhillers
  2. sandhills
  3. sandhis
  4. Sandhoe
  5. Sandhoff disease
  6. sandhog
  7. sandhogged
  8. sandhogger
  9. sandhoggers
  10. sandhogging
  11. sandhogs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sandhog (page history and authors). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-sandhog.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sandhog.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sandhog. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.