DIG UP

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does dig up mean? 

• DIG UP (verb)
  The verb DIG UP has 2 senses:

1. find by digging in the ground

2. remove, harvest, or recover by digging

  Familiarity information: DIG UP used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DIG UP (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Find by digging in the ground

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

dig up; excavate; turn up

Context example:

I dug up an old box in the garden

Hypernyms (to "dig up" is one way to...):

obtain (come into possession of)

Verb group:

locate; turn up (discover the location of; determine the place of; find by searching or examining)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "dig up"):

grub out; grub up (dig up)

nuzzle (dig out with the snout)

disinter; exhume (dig up for reburial or for medical investigation; of dead bodies)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Remove, harvest, or recover by digging

Classified under:

Verbs of seeing, hearing, feeling

Synonyms:

dig; dig out; dig up

Context example:

dig coal

Hypernyms (to "dig up" is one way to...):

excavate; unearth (recover through digging)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

 Context examples 

I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched to a corner of her garden, and stooped to dig up some little root there.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

To find ice that astronauts could easily dig up, the study's authors relied on two heat-sensitive instruments: MRO's Mars Climate Sounder and the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on Mars Odyssey.

(NASA's Treasure Map for Water Ice on Mars, NASA)

Why do they not get to work and dig up these long rows of black and crooked stumps which I see on every hand?

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But you do not find the good husbandman dig up his planted corn to see if he grow; that is for the children who play at husbandry, and not for those who take it as of the work of their life.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The Houyhnhnms keep the Yahoos for present use in huts not far from the house; but the rest are sent abroad to certain fields, where they dig up roots, eat several kinds of herbs, and search about for carrion, or sometimes catch weasels and luhimuhs (a sort of wild rat), which they greedily devour.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Well, I was whisperin' it'd be a good idea if you could dig up a gentleman friend—for her (indicating her companion), and then, we could go off an' have ice-cream soda somewhere, or coffee, or anything.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

"You wouldn't need a backhoe to dig up this ice. You could use a shovel," said the paper's lead author, Sylvain Piqueux of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

(NASA's Treasure Map for Water Ice on Mars, NASA)