dig
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "dig", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "dig" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "dig" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
dig is aEnglishverb. It means: 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 ... Pronounced /dɪɡ/. It ranks #4,940 in English word frequency. Often confused with do and Dr.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | dig |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /dɪɡ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #4,940 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for dig is 3 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /dɪɡ/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,940 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for dig in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "do", "Dr", "DJ", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English diggen (“to dig”, 13th c.), an alteration of dīken, from Old English dīcian (“to dig a ditch, mound up earth”), from Proto-West Germanic *dīkōn, which see for cognates. This verb is denominal from Proto-Germanic *dīkaz (“pool, puddle; dy… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is dig, spelled D-I-G, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To 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.
- 2To get by digging; to take from the ground; often with up.
- 3To take ore from its bed, in distinction from making excavations in search of ore.
- 4To work like a digger; to study ploddingly and laboriously.
- 5To investigate, to research, often followed by out or up.
- 6To thrust; to poke.
- 7To defend against an attack hit by the opposing team by successfully passing the ball
Etymology
From Middle English diggen (“to dig”, 13th c.), an alteration of dīken, from Old English dīcian (“to dig a ditch, mound up earth”), from Proto-West Germanic *dīkōn, which see for cognates. This verb is denominal from Proto-Germanic *dīkaz (“pool, puddle; dyke, ditch”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeygʷ- (“to stab, dig”). The form with g may have been influenced by Old French *diguer, a variant of dikier, itself from the West Germanic verb above. French forms with g are attested only in the 15th c., thus 200 years later than in English. On the other hand, French has according forms also for the underlying noun (cf. digue) and the phonetic development is more plausible in French than in English.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #4,940 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: