Word.ws English Dictionary

steam shovel

Syllables: steam shov·el/ˈstiːm ˌʃʌvl̩/US/ˈstim ˌʃʌv(ə)l/

steam shovel noun: an excavating machine designed to effect a shovelling action through steam power.

steam shovel: an excavating machine designed to effect a shovelling action through steam power
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

steam shovel (plural steam shovels)

  1. (historical) An excavating machine designed to effect a shovelling action through steam power.
    • The construction of the Ealing & South Harrow proceeded very slowly during the winter of 1898-9 but by July most of the bridges had been built and the stations started. Two steam shovels, six locomotives, and 325 men were employed.1959 September, Alan A. Jackson, “North-West from Ealing—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 608
  2. (broadly) Any excavating machine of similar design, no matter how powered.
    Synonyms:
    power shovel

Verb

steam shovel (third-person singular simple present steam shovels, present participle (US) steam shoveling or (UK) steam shovelling, simple past and past participle (US) steam shoveled or (UK) steam shovelled)

  1. (also, figuratively, transitive) To excavate (a place, or something from a place) using a steam shovel.
    • At Lahontan the teams were engaged on the earthwork of the dike with the adjoining Lahontan Beach canal south of the dam. Paving of the up-stream slope of the dam was carried out by night shift in steam shoveling rock at the quarry and delivering by cars and cableway to the dam, where paving was...1914 February, “Construction Work, January”, in Reclamation Record, volume 5, number 2, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Reclamation Service, →OCLC, page 66, column 2
    • [H]ere in America there are mountains of oil rock which can be blasted and steam-shoveled and transported by gravity to great retorts which will turn out oil and fertilizer in limitless quantities.1918 February, Guy Elliott Mitchell, “Billions of Barrels of Oil Locked up in Rocks”, in Gilbert H[ovey] Grosvenor, editor, National Geographic, volume XXXIII, number 2, Washington, D.C.: National...
  2. (also, figuratively, intransitive) To operate a steam shovel.
    • I have never had any experience with steam shoveling.[1876 September 28, C. C. Martin (witness), “[Proceedings before the City Court of Brooklyn, Kings County, New York]”, in N.Y. Court of Appeals: William C. Kingsley & Abner C. Keeney, Appellants...
    • [I]n the tumultuous rootings of a potato field, in which hogs had long foraged and steam-shoveled, there were woodcock, squatting sedately and boring assiduously in the soft brown loam.1920 June, Archibald Rutledge, “Twenty Feet at Rimini”, in Reginald T. Townsend, editor, Country Life, volume XXXVIII, number 2, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, page 92, column 3

steam shovel meaning in Tamil

steam shovel in Tamil

நீராவி மண்வாரி

Examples of steam shovel in a sentence

  • Jesse imagined a group of Children back there steam shoveling the mashed corpses out of the way, an assembly line of the beasts passing the deat and wounded back toward the arena.2019, Jonathan Janz, chapter 3, in Savage Species, London: Flame Tree Publishing, →ISBN, part 1 (Night Terrors):
  • They're steam shoveling there with this great ugly nose plowing out a hole and throwing the dirt up on the bank or in trucks to haul away.a. 1964 (date written), A[iden] W[ilson] Tozer, Worship: The Reason We Were Created—Collected Insights from A. W. Tozer, Chicago, Ill....

Synonyms of steam shovel

Forms of steam shovel

Noun
pluralsteam shovels
Verb
third-person singular presentsteam shovels
present participle USsteam shoveling
present participle UKsteam shovelling
past participle USsteam shoveled
past USsteam shoveled
past participle UKsteam shovelled
past UKsteam shovelled
alternative formsteam-shovel

Origin of steam shovel

From steam + shovel.

Questions about steam shovel

What does steam shovel mean?
Steam shovel means an excavating machine designed to effect a shovelling action through steam power.
What is steam shovel in Tamil?
Steam shovel in Tamil is நீராவி மண்வாரி. See Steam shovel meaning in Tamil.
How do you use steam shovel in a sentence?
Jesse imagined a group of Children back there steam shoveling the mashed corpses out of the way, an assembly line of the beasts passing the deat and wounded back toward the arena.
What part of speech is steam shovel?
Steam shovel can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce steam shovel?
Steam shovel is pronounced /ˈstiːm ˌʃʌvl̩/ (UK).
What is the plural of steam shovel?
The plural of steam shovel is steam shovels.

Words near steam shovel in the dictionary

  1. steam rollers
  2. steam room
  3. steam rooms
  4. steam ship
  5. steam ships
  6. steam shovel
  7. steam shoveled
  8. steam shoveling
  9. steam shovelled
  10. steam shovelling
  11. steam shovels

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: steam shovel (page history and authors); steam shovel (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-steam shovel.wav.

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